New here, and even though i’ve favored anarchist philosophy for a long time, i never discussed it with anybody else. So i thought i should ask around and get an idea of what the common ideas are. Specifically regarding economy and capitalism.
Premises, i’ll try to keep it short:
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I believe we can agree that “people should be fairly/ethically rewarded for their labor” is a reasonable ideal, and that profit is a much greater barrier to that ideal than tax is. With tax, it’s less ambigious if, where and when things “trickle down”, and people get some (certainly much room for improvement) democratic (likewise) say in the matter.
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The capitalist economy obviously contradicts anarchist ideals of decentralization. Non-democratic and hardly meritocratic (chance and anti-competitive tactics) power is concentrated in the hands of a small elite, arguably more influential for our day-to-day lives than governments.
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Humans are imperfect - imperfectly aligned and imperfectly capable, - so one shouldn’t give a human (or a body of humans) more authority/responsibility than is absolutely necessary, and do all that one can do to continuously ensure and audit their alignment and capability. As a political idea you’re all very familiar with this, but i also extend it to economy.
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Capitalism does some job at allocating (“investing”) labor and resources “intelligently” (using very generous wording), indirectly, into various measures of progress. It doesn’t do the best job, very far from it, but i think any alternative one proposes should at least try to do a better job at converting labor and resources into improving everybody’s quality of life.
There are some existing alternatives to convert labor. There is for example the concept of worker cooperatives (which could optionally be non-profit), which i find interesting.
But i don’t see that by itself scale easily to national or even global level. Especially regarding the labor/resource allocation or “investment” aspect. I’ve spent a great deal trying to conceptualize an ethical, decentralized and also more effective (at converting labor and resources into quality of life) alternative to capitalism, but i don’t feel like my thoughts are worth seriously sharing yet. As a very vague summary, think non-profit worker cooperatives + WIP decentralized, local-first hierarchial method of democratic crowd funding.
I’m curious to hear what thoughts and ideas you have on the subject. Also perhaps literature recommendations (please summarize).
Not sure if any of this will be helpful to you, but here goes.
First off, I’d recommend checking out The Anarchist Collectives by Sam Dolgoff, Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell (a first-hand account, sympathetic but also critical, which I think is important), and Durruti in the Spanish Revolution by Abel Paz. If you can, also look into solid work on the Makhnovist movement in Ukraine. These texts focus on revolutionary anarchist projects and how dual-power systems functioned, mostly in ways that supported anarchist goals.
Despite what some Marxist-Leninists and many others claim, anarchism isn’t about seizing the state and flipping a switch to create instant communism. There’s real work to be done.
My thoughts on this: A big part of that work involves building trade unions, sure, but it’s also about creating a culture rooted in cooperation. In my opinion, anarchist projects only truly thrive when there’s a strong cooperative culture in place first. As individualistic as our society likes to imagine itself, I believe it’s only a matter of time before more people recognize this and begin organizing on a municipal level.
Which brings me to this: to make any of this viable, we need to organize, organize, and organize. We have to come together at the local level if we want to test out a real, modern anarchist experiment. We need a wide range of people, intellectuals, workers, scientists, farmers, philosophers, and especially the poor. The focus should be on identifying what people actually need and figuring out how to meet those needs. This can be done without seizing the state, without violence, and without depending entirely on existing institutions.
I’m a committed anarchist, but that doesn’t mean I can guarantee a fully anarchistic global system in our lifetimes. It doesn’t mean I’m a nihilist either, on the contrary, I’m pretty optimistic about the future. It just means I believe in seeking alternatives and putting in the effort to make them work.
That you for those recommendations.
but it’s also about creating a culture rooted in cooperation
In my opinion, anarchist projects only truly thrive when there’s a strong cooperative culture in place first.
I fully agree with you. That is one of the main problems in my own attempts to conceptualize an anarchist and intelligently labor/resource-allocating economy. When there is no tangible reward for investment, what motivates people to invest into local or shared projects? It should be a shared will to improve e.g. the standards of living of the community - whichever level of community (neighborhood, village, township, state, etc) is under consideration.
It should be obvious and expected, if we take a step back to consider what anarchism is generally about. Not all administration is optional, and in the absence of any some will emerge naturally in suboptiomal ways. Abolished centralized authority needs to replaced, it cannot just be removed, and the replacement favored by anarchists is voluntary cooperation and good will. But humans aren’t saints, and the hard compromize to be made is in deciding what needs to be centralized and delegated (and how, and to whom).
And in the economy, it feels like every major attempt (to try something new) made by anybody so far has been a failure in at least some major way, including capitalism and communism.
There’s real work to be done.
I agree, and it’s challenging to even theorize. It seems easier on the purely administrative end, and serious proposals have existed for a long time. The real challenge seems to be the economy, which is (or can be, as in the quasi-aristrocracy (if not political, then still in the control of resources and labor) that we live in) a quasi-administration.
When there is no tangible reward for investment, what motivates people to invest into local or shared projects? It should be a shared will to improve e.g. the standards of living of the community - whichever level of community (neighborhood, village, township, state, etc) is under consideration.
Society is pretty individualistic (especially in cities). Communal action and investments require people to think not only in their own interest but also in other members of the community. I think that is the biggest mindset shift we first need to accomplish.
Another complicating factor in current society is money. If you motivated people to think about others, investing their own private money in a project like a communal garden which others will also use for free is another thing I think.
When there is no tangible reward for investment, what motivates people to invest into local or shared projects?
I think education can help us out with that. If we can manage to teach not only our own children but create environments, like schools, where we can teach critical thinking and epistemic hygiene to all people that might actually help combat some of the indoctrination our children face in high-school, college and (bleh) mainstream media. These would have to be highly localized. A big hurdle is sabotage and discrediting perpetrated by the US government. As we all know the government is well known for this kind of stuff.
The point I’m trying to make is if we can teach people to be aware of their relation to the state, it might actually bring people together to take direct action. I know it sounds too hypothetical, but it’s not crazy to believe the current US administration will steep to a new low. The rich want more money, and we know all too well what happens when the majority have nothing and the rich have it all.
It really seems like a daunting task at first, and the amount of work that has to be done may be demoralizing, but as Murray Bookchin said: “If we do not do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable.” And this becomes ever so clear when you look at what kind of shit the US and EU get away with these days.
I would say i find that very optimistic, but that is clearly also your point:
“If we do not do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable.”
It’s both inspiring but also disillusioning. It does seem like something impossible.
Education would be a great start, but i am doubtful it would be even near sufficient. Even under the strictest conditions, beyond education also nurture, indoctrination from a young age, i believe enough people would remain fallible and/or misguided to make a system that does not rely on authority stable long-term. That’s the difficulty with ideal anarchism in general, is it not? But i’m not trying to counter hope and optimism, actually i’m trying to come up with a solution.
Our most ancient ancestors lived in, for the most part, big families. Authority didn’t go much beyond basic family authority. Matriarchs and patriarchs, smart aunts and uncles, unruly young, each contributing will to a final decision, in different ratios depending on domain.
Why were no great kingdoms founded 100 thousand years ago? Why are even the largest settlements no larger than a handful of big families?
Apologies for letting a different ideology of mine seep into this problem, but perhaps one could culturally emulate, even if at just an abstract level, those conditions that prevented the emergence of large, central authority for hundreds of thousands of years before urbanization. Not outright primitivism, not if it can be helped. It’s more of a psychological and behavioral investigation, really, and mostly just to augment different strategies.
Or perhaps the better solution is to just curb my expectations for anarchism, and accept a partial implementation for a start. Jeez, i’m already halfway towards primitivism again.
I believe we can agree that “people should be fairly/ethically rewarded for their labor” is a reasonable ideal
I dont really see why this is a particularly goof ideal to build around the systems we use to express and fulfill our needs. Maybe you could explain why you would prefer to use that instead of ideals like “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” or “well-being for all”.
I think an interesting read might be the section I.3 What could the economic structure of anarchy look like? of An Anarchist FAQ.
What I would be interested in is an more insurrectionist / individualist / egoist answer to this question, because their perspective is often not mentioned in these kinds of questions.
I agree i might have been a bit presumptuous.
I think an interesting read might be the section I.3 What could the economic structure of anarchy look like?
That is precisely what i was hoping to find, thank you.
Maybe you could explain why you would prefer to use that instead of ideals like “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” or “well-being for all”.
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I don’t personally favor the ideal i stated, i just stated that it is reasonable, presuming it to be the default for most people, and so i put it into the premises to generify this discussion. It also provides a compatibilistic default, more on that in 3.
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I did not mention it here, but from unrelated but intertwined radical environmentalist ideals, i see almost all forms of labor, beyond what basic necessities (housing, food, education, healthcare) require, as evils in and of themselves. Excess labor should either not be performed or obligatorily used to compensate deficits elsewhere (=> donations, welfare, community funding, science, etc). Aka non-profit for all. Just to advertize the idea, I would also invite you to look into how AT&T burned their excess when they were regulatorily obliged to - Bell Labs was born, and the 21st century was invented.
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To elaborate on what i stated in 1, chosing the most challenging/constraining (to the end of providing welfare for all, which i kind of implied with “converting labor and resources into improving everybody’s quality of life”) ideal would yield us a model that is most robust, and more agnostic to more specialized ideals (eg what i stated in 2), which can still be implemented afterwards.
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