[HN Gopher] Petr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid
___________________________________________________________________
Petr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid
Author : isallthings
Score : 153 points
Date : 2022-11-05 06:34 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (areomagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (areomagazine.com)
| bxjx wrote:
| "Conquest of Bread" had a huge impact on my politics. It cut
| through the capitalist realist narrative that we're all in
| economic competition and that capitalism is the only sane
| solution. It made me feel like another world is possible. I
| changed my life to pursue these other possibilities ever since.
| sershe wrote:
| Of course it's possible, it existed before capitalism and had
| tons of mutual aid and resilience. It's called "subsistence
| farming". Without surplus extraction + capital accumulation, it
| was always stuck at low equilibrium where everyone is poor. See
| e.g. [1] Also as a side note I don't discuss here, anyone quick
| enough to band together and abuse the mutual-aiding community
| was easily able to do so, hence feudalism, or e.g. cartels in
| our times.
|
| In fact they observe it even in existing cultures where strong
| kin institutions prevent saving, both via "mutual aid" itself,
| but also cultural expectation of mutual aid creating an
| incentive to spend ASAP - cause if you don't, your
| family/friends/... are going to ask you for money. Meaning
| again everyone ends up poorer. Breaking kin institutions and
| "mutual aid" is one of the keys to actually improving QoL for
| most people [2]
|
| [1] https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-
| they... - Banqueting the Yields, and other parts
|
| [2] The WEIRDest People in the World book
| mellavora wrote:
| I agree with your point that strong "mutual aide"/kin
| institutions often (but not necessarily) lead to low economic
| growth.
|
| And clearly surplus extraction + capital accumulation
| (leading to productive investment) strongly enhance economic
| growth.
|
| However, capitalism in its current form of all-consuming
| consumerism, a system that must eat everything including
| itself, I'm not so sold on.
|
| Just finished reading the Laundry Files (Atrocity
| Archives/Charles Stross) thanks to a recommendation on HN.
| One of the terrible beasts mentioned in the book is a
| creature that eats all the information in its universe,
| rushing the universe to entropy death.
|
| The analogy to bottomless consumerism is too obvious in my
| mind for me not to draw it.
| sershe wrote:
| I don't think consumerism and capitalism are related in
| this way. Consumerism just happens to be what people want
| to do. Capitalism as a better substrate allows people to do
| more of what they want to do... people in different systems
| (like Soviet Union) for the most part were just as
| "consumerist", they simply couldn't do as much consumption
| because the system sucked. That "consumerism" is bad is
| your personal value judgement (and mine, but I recognize it
| as such).
|
| It's kinda like, most major cultures wanted to, let's say,
| (among other things) study the stars and enslave other
| people. Primitive technology and economy produced a lot of
| cultures with calendars and simple systems of slavery.
| Stable empire like e.g. Caliphate was able to leverage
| their economy and better technology to do better at
| astronomy, and to do some real large-scale enslaving.
| Western countries eventually used even better technology
| and economic system to do things like send people to other
| planets and do some truly industrial-scale slavery.
| Everything just works better with technology - what you
| choose to do and how to change values to want astronomy and
| not want slavery is a separate question. Ditto capitalism
| vs consumerism.
| incompatible wrote:
| I heard (of course) of anarchism a long time ago, but I always
| wrote it off as impractical: since without government, there's
| nobody to stop somebody from starting one. However, this may be
| incorrect, but it does require a population that is always
| willing to fight against the formation of a government. I think
| now that anarchism is practical, at least for a population of
| committed anarchists, and in the absence of hostile external
| forces. There's no way that anarchism could be imposed on
| people who don't want it (a contradiction), and it's going to
| be a stretch to expect people who grew up with capitalism or
| authoritarianism (or both) to accept it.
|
| It was in Le Guin's novel "The Dispossessed" that I first read
| a convincing account of such a society, and I only later read
| some of Kropotkin and Bakunin's work.
|
| Edit: Other forms of society are based on a carrot and stick
| system; people believe that without threats or rewards, people
| won't bother to work; they don't believe in mutual aid as
| sufficient in itself.
| sershe wrote:
| Yeah, if everyone was like me, I bet AnCap would work (very
| different from most-common versions of anarchism, and in my
| view, the only non-morally-repugnant one - but still
| impractical). Heck I bet if you could clone some saints old-
| school communism would work just fine :)
|
| The main problem is how a society can work without such
| restrictions...
| incompatible wrote:
| Anarcho-capitalism is nothing like the communist anarchism
| that Kropotkin was writing about. There's no pretence at
| equality, you've basically just replaced government
| repression with private repression by the wealthy.
|
| It's a choice of economic system, not morality. There's
| nothing immoral about making all work voluntary and
| eliminating private property, it's just a different system
| with different expectations.
|
| The rule about property in communist anarchism would be
| something like: it's yours for as long as you are using it,
| but once you no longer need it, somebody else can take it
| to use (or repurpose the materials).
| samatman wrote:
| I call this the "you and what army" problem: if you look
| around the room and you don't see the State, _l 'Etat, c'est
| vous_.
|
| Council mutualism is not only practical, it's practiced, but
| it's practiced by Hutterites.
|
| Can it be done without Anabaptist convictions? I don't see
| any reason why not. Has it? Not with that level of success,
| no.
|
| The you and what army problem being obvious, inescapable, and
| inherent, political anarchism will, insofar as it plays a
| role at all, continue to be a way that people more inherently
| _l 'Etat c'est moi_ about it seize power, often jailing and
| killing the anarchist leaders (the anarcharchs, if you will)
| in the process.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >I think now that anarchism is practical, at least for a
| population of committed anarchists, and in the absence of
| hostile external forces.
|
| I too classify all my physics problems as 'spherical cows in
| a vacuum', but unless you've ignored Twitter your entire life
| you should realize powerful forces of propaganda exist that
| ensure that this will never exist. Threats exist in the form
| of ruthless humans that will ally with the corruptible and
| greedy to consolidate power to the point of acting with
| wonton violence. These people use ideas of nationalism and
| shared identity (cooperation) along with propaganda that
| militarizes the group against common enemies, generally being
| other groups that have resources they can take.
|
| In general having a 'stable' society with wealth can be an
| inoculation against this human behavior of falling for
| propaganda, but again, it requires stability against the
| environment, against disease, against economic swings,
| against competing ideas. Anarchist societies just seem to
| handwave these issues away.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| In what universe can there exist a society not subject to
| external forces?
| pixl97 wrote:
| In the dreamland libertarians seem to live in.
| incompatible wrote:
| At least to the point that the society is left to itself
| without being invaded. That was the issue for the anarchist
| experiment in 1930s Spain, it was shut down by fascists and
| Soviet-aligned communists. Would it have survived if left
| to itself? I guess we'll never know.
|
| I find the general unwillingness to experiment with
| alternative models of society, whether they are
| libertarianism, or anarchism, or whatever, quite
| disappointing. A few "special economic zones" doesn't seem
| like too much to ask for.
|
| Instead, we just replicate the same old model, which these
| days is a mixture of capitalism and government authority.
| The government authority supposedly either suppresses the
| worst outcomes of capitalism, or is a source of corruption
| and abuse in itself. Now we have well over 100 such
| governments around the world, with varying degrees of
| success for the majority of their populations, and I'm not
| sure we are really learning anything.
| keybored wrote:
| > I heard (of course) of anarchism a long time ago, but I
| always wrote it off as impractical: since without government,
| there's nobody to stop somebody from starting one.
|
| Without knightly orders there is nobody stopping people from
| forming knightly orders.
| bxjx wrote:
| Can totally relate! The Dispossessed was another seminal book
| for me.
| jpster wrote:
| > Anarchism argues that no centralized government is
| necessary for people to lead happy, just and equitable lives.
|
| How does this work when one is a minority in a prejudiced
| society? This concern has always hindered me from thinking of
| anarchism as viable.
| kqr wrote:
| One of the core ideas of anarchism is that everyone is an
| equal. In other words, anarchism presupposes lack of
| significant prejudice.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _In other words, anarchism presupposes lack of
| significant prejudice._
|
| That seems to put it in "fun thought experiment"
| territory.
| kqr wrote:
| Or "conditional probability" territory. Of the people who
| would choose to espouse a philosophy of treating everyone
| as equal, it is unlikely to find someone significantly
| prejudiced.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| Espousing ideology isn't the same as believing it or
| living it. The moment the threat of the state recedes,
| and sometimes before, anarchist violence turns inwards;
| race, sex, and gender expression are just as suitable as
| status markers for anarchists as anyone else.
|
| https://archive.org/details/BetrayalACriticalAnalysisOfRa
| peC...
| notch656a wrote:
| A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but
| especially fucked in a democracy. Democracy is literally
| legitimization of force against the minority, by virtue of
| vote. Even the constitution, which supposedly protects
| minority rights, can be amended to remove those rights by a
| prejudiced majority.
|
| IMO the prejudiced minority has the best chance when they
| can make it as painful as possible for the majority to harm
| them. That is, to disable the state's law as much as
| possible from being wielded against non-aggressor
| minorities.
|
| >How does this work when one is a minority in a prejudiced
| society?
|
| In practice in places like Northern Syria, which much of is
| essentially devoid of strong government, Syriac Christians
| banded together with machine guns and literally kill anyone
| who comes to aggress against them. Sure, Assad / the Kurds
| (who are their allies) / other majority around them could
| fuck them up if they like, but it's not worth the trouble.
| davidgay wrote:
| > A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked,
| but especially fucked in a democracy.
|
| The history of genocides and ethnic cleansing, plenty of
| which happened historically and recently outside
| democracies, disagrees.
| notch656a wrote:
| No one is disagreeing that governments are the biggest
| perpetuator of killing in the past 100 years. Government
| is responsible for far more killing than by non-
| government actors. Using your interesting logic, one
| would disagree with the existence of government if one
| were trying to minimize these deaths. Is this your
| argument in support of anarchism?
| incompatible wrote:
| There are complaints that an anarchist society wouldn't
| be perfect, as though any perfection can be found in any
| of the well-over 100 governments run on the principle of
| capitalism plus government authority. Not even the
| capitalist ideal is respected (freedom to use your
| private property however you like), since it would cause
| so many problems in practice.
| abeppu wrote:
| > It was in Le Guin's novel "The Dispossessed" that I first
| read a convincing account of such a society
|
| It's been a minute, but _was_ The Dispossessed a convincing
| account of such a society? From what I remember, the
| protagonist encounters academic gate-keepers who effectively
| control who gets to do teaching and research or what gets
| communicated to the main planet, centralized systems choose
| things as personal as what you're named, resources (food) are
| distributed unequally and untransparently (Shivek is
| surprised when the big university cafeteria has more/better
| food?). Coercive hierarchies still develop, but they're
| cloaked in the dogma of anarchism.
|
| I read this as showing that even if you can isolate to an
| extreme (by being on a resource-poor moon), and have a
| language and education system which tries to suppress
| concepts of ownership, and a population goes through the
| shared trauma of fighting to feed themselves, people will
| still find a way to limit each other's freedom, and exercise
| power, and accumulate or control resources.
| incompatible wrote:
| It wasn't perfect anarchism, by any means. Apparently Le
| Guin was well aware of how anarchism and human nature would
| tend to conflict, and she described only an "ambiguous
| utopia".
| pixl97 wrote:
| On your last sentence I like saying this as follows
| "Humanity still hasn't found a way to deal with people that
| don't mind a large piece of a small pie"
| bbzealot wrote:
| Same here.
|
| Growing up fully immersed in the capitalist world it's easy to
| think that this is the natural state of things.
|
| This book, among others, helped me change perspective and
| challenge my assumptions about the world.
|
| Totally recommended.
| _0ffh wrote:
| Well, if we lived in a society which was based on voluntary
| social interactions - which are by definition mutually
| beneficial - and where bodily attacks and forcible
| expropriation by dint of the "right" of superior force was
| deplored and defended against by the majority, I'd call that
| a capitalist society.
| okasaki wrote:
| How can private property exist in such a society? If you
| and I both claim to own some land and we can't come to an
| agreement, isn't it going to be decided with superior
| force?
|
| How is this society mutually beneficial by definition? If I
| own the fields and decide to destroy the produce (it's
| mine, I can do whatever I want?) while the locals starve,
| this is fine right?
| _0ffh wrote:
| > How is this society mutually beneficial by definition
|
| I wrote "voluntary social interactions [...] are by
| definition mutually beneficial". A voluntary interaction
| implies that all participants in the interaction have
| chosen to do so by their own free will. That implies that
| they value going through with the interaction higher than
| to forego the interaction. Hence, it benefits all of
| them.
|
| > If you and I both claim to own some land and we can't
| come to an agreement, isn't it going to be decided with
| superior force?
|
| That's merely a technical problem. A land register might
| be a solution.
| abecedarius wrote:
| How can territorial animals not be fighting each other
| all the time?
|
| http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Property/Property.
| htm...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| .. a bulk of theology for millennia has addressed this
| exactly; informally in culture, too.
| roenxi wrote:
| > isn't it going to be decided with superior force?
|
| Yes. There is always going to be a superior force and it
| decides who owns what.
|
| Practically, the point of anarchism is that the force
| should be limited (voluntarily, like how armies in a
| healthy democracy voluntarily subordinate themselves to
| the voters) to the absolute minimum role possible. For
| example, the popular configuration right now is that the
| group that controls the strongest army (ie, 'the
| government') is also seen as responsible for providing
| healthcare and welfare. The anarchists think this is
| stupid because there is no reason to think that there is
| an organization that is simultaneously good at so many
| things at once.
|
| > How is this society mutually beneficial by definition?
|
| Anyone using force to achieve their aims gets removed
| from society, so all that is left is people transacting
| mutually beneficially. It isn't so radical, that is close
| to what we have now. The vision is basically you go to
| the shops and buy stuff.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Anyone using force to achieve their aims gets removed
| from society,
|
| I think I see a fatal flaw in the logic here....
| roenxi wrote:
| That part is also something that most societies do right
| now. What do you see as the flaw there?
| pixl97 wrote:
| That there is any barrier for the force to remain limited
| beyond the barriers already established in our current
| governments. In this argument it seems that we've
| established that force is needed. But there is no
| compelling argument put forth by anarchism that
| establishes a reasonable control mechanism for limiting
| said force. Yea "You can't tell my what to do _by force_
| " seems like a good mantra, but it really sucks the
| moment someone else gathers up enough people voluntarily
| (or monitarialy) to subdue the limited resistance your
| type of governance allows. The "We'll all get together
| and fight the enemy" sounds good until you realize that
| about half the battle put forth by the enemy will be
| psyops in getting the anarchist to fight themselves
| allowing them to be even more easily defeated. Once a
| significant portion of the anarchist are convinced to
| give up and not fight the enemy, and if they give up
| those that will fight they will be spared, the remaining
| pockets of resistance will much more easily collapse.
| You're back to 'anarchist nationalism" to prevent just
| this from happening.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The cited article quotes Kropotkin talking about ants and
| how they cooperate. It says if an ant does not cooperate by
| sharing food, they are treated as an enemy.
|
| This is what he meant by mutual aid.
|
| > Kropotkin was fascinated by how ant cheaters (those who
| refuse to dispense aid) are dealt with: "If an ant which
| has its crop full has been selfish enough to refuse feeding
| a comrade, it will be treated as an enemy, or even worse.
| If the refusal has been made while its kinsfolk were
| fighting with some other species, they will fall back upon
| the greedy individual with greater vehemence than even upon
| the enemies themselves."
|
| A 19th century Russian prince that became a socialist
| perhaps thinks of something different when he thinks of
| "beaurocracy" or "government" than a 21st century HN reader
| does.
| jostylr wrote:
| This seems like a horrible notion of how to run a human
| society and is shocking if that is a foundational
| observation leading to his anarchist outlook. In a
| capitalist society, someone who refuses to share also
| fails to thrive as much as they could (natural
| consequence), possibly falling into poverty. But there is
| no need to violently rip them apart. In a society in
| which all is given freely, the only alternative for lack
| of cooperation would seem to be active punishment, either
| violence or some kind of exiling.
|
| Even if one is okay with punishing those who refuse to
| work for the good of all, when does it get invoked? Who
| decides? What if there is a mistake in that notion?
|
| And this is in the context in which work is generally
| simple to observe and equate. In a modern society, work
| is very unequal. How do you figure out appropriate levels
| of working across nursing, serving coffee, working in a
| sewage treatment plant, mining, farming, teaching,
| walking dogs, long-distance hauling, programming,
| managing, etc. Who would make those decisions? Do you
| have agreed upon shifts? If someone shows up late or
| doesn't show up, is there some consequence meted out by
| someone?
|
| In an economic system, one has the price system where all
| of that gets figured out. If you think you are underpaid
| in such a system, you can seek to get paid more by doing
| something else. If you think someone is overpaid, you can
| undercut their prices. If you don't show up for work, you
| don't get paid. This creates the changing conditions that
| lead to better allocation of resources, including labor.
| It is unclear how this could work in a society where
| everyone just works for the betterment of society and the
| fruits of all labor are distributed "equally" (things are
| not equal, so someone has to decide some kind of price-
| equivalent system for this, I presume)?
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > Who would make those decisions? Some anarchists have
| everyone vote on such matters. Some have a legal system
| that is elected.
|
| > Do you have agreed upon shifts? Yes. These are
| established by vote of the workers.
|
| > If someone shows up late or doesn't show up, is there
| some consequence meted out by someone? Yes.
|
| Rather than using prices to set which work is desirable
| people vote on it. Some anarchist societies today
| distribute undesirable work across the entire community.
| Everyone takes one cleaning shift a week for example.
|
| If you're curious, you should read The Dispossessed. I
| especially recommend that book because it does not paint
| a utopian picture of an anarchist society. And most
| anarchists will be honest that you will loose benefits
| moving from a capitalist-statist political economy to an
| anarchist one. The goal in moving to an anarchist society
| is not to create a society where individual access to
| material wealth is the same as in a capitalist society.
| The goal is to create a society in which the unstated
| forms of domination that exist in "free" societies today
| are weakend.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There's all sorts of interesting arguments about how
| various libertarian societies would enforce their non-
| aggression, property rights and contract law etc.
|
| It's very lazy to claim that any society doesn't have
| this requirement.
|
| Also, anarchism (or socialism) and markets are not
| necessarily mutually exclusive, there's many different
| types, though some of those may claim they are exclusive
| and only theirs is the true anarchism/socialism.
| _0ffh wrote:
| Yes, I know. I read the article. I also think it is
| sensible to be aware of cheaters and treat them
| accordingly, though we're not a haplodiploid species.
| Bear in mind that dealing with cheaters must not be taken
| as an excuse for violence or robbery.
|
| What is your point regarding my answer to gp post? I
| didn't even mention the words "bureaucracy" or
| "government". Rest assured though, that I despise them
| both.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The article used those terms, in a way that cast
| Kropotkin in a "right libertarian" light which struck me
| as anachronistic given his time period.
|
| Your comment seemed to echo that, talking about some
| Anarcho-capitalist libertarian ideal buzzword society,
| linking that to his anarchism and then further attaching
| the generic word 'capitalist' to it.
|
| This felt like a stretch.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
|
| > Anarcho-capitalism is also distinguished from
| anarchism, an anti-capitalist movement that opposes
| unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, and social anarchism,
| a branch of anarchism that sees individual freedom as
| interrelated with mutual aid. Unlike anarchists, anarcho-
| capitalists support private property and private
| institutions. Anarcho-capitalists also reject the
| libertarian socialist economic theories of anarchism,
| arguing that they are inherently authoritarian or require
| authoritarianism to achieve, while believing that there
| is no coercion under capitalism. Despite its name,
| anarcho-capitalism lies outside the tradition of
| anarchism and is more closely affiliated with capitalism,
| right-libertarianism, and liberalism
| _0ffh wrote:
| I'd like to point you to a detailed rebuttal of this
| claim in text [1] and video [2] form. Wikipedia should
| not be anyone's only source.
|
| [1] https://springtimeofnations.org/2021/04/yes-ancaps-
| are-anarc...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJb2-bsWP6Y
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Having an obscure historical claim to a word commonly
| associated with people who you disagree with is the best
| kind of Technically Correct, but not great for
| communication.
|
| I was mostly trying to point out that there are
| disagreements about what "anarchist" means and avoid
| confusion.
| _0ffh wrote:
| > I was mostly trying to point out that there are
| disagreements
|
| I've got a feeling you hit the nail squarely on the head
| there! =)
|
| I didn't quite catch your meaning.
| [deleted]
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| That's not a capitalist society. This is the correct
| definition for Capitalism:
|
| > an economic and political system in which a country's
| trade and industry are controlled by private owners for
| profit, rather than by the state.
|
| It doesn't imply voluntary social interactions, it doesn't
| imply some sort of protection against the "superior force"
| you mention.
|
| The values you enounce belong to any healthy society as
| voluntary social interactions happen in socialism too,
| where the majority (the proletariat) is protected against
| the use of superior force by the rich.
|
| Now, would you please explain how can social interactions
| be voluntary in a system where property-less people have no
| other choice to survive but to accept the least bad offer
| from those who own the means of production?
|
| Interactions can really be voluntary once neither of the
| parts depend on the interaction to survive. Once we free
| exchanges from such power play, then we can talk about
| will.
|
| This is why the only just and free system can be one where
| nobody has to struggle for the material needs necessary for
| their survival.
| _0ffh wrote:
| And how would you suggest that someone could become and
| stay wealthy, if their only legal means to acquire wealth
| is to provide value to society?
|
| Would you rather take what you desire by force, under the
| pretense that you somehow deserve to own what others have
| peacefully acquired? That would be the mentality of a
| street thug.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > And how would you suggest that someone could become and
| stay wealthy, if their only legal means to acquire wealth
| is to provide value to society?
|
| The possibility of "someone" becoming wealthier than
| others has no value to me. I care much more about the
| possibility of people starving or living a terrible life
| due to lack of basic material needs.
|
| > Would you rather take what you desire by force, under
| the pretense that you somehow deserve to own what others
| have peacefully acquired? That would be the mentality of
| a street thug.
|
| Capitalism thrived during Nazism and Fascism. An entire
| economy was born out of the extermination of the Jews,
| and capitalists made tons of profits out of it. They also
| profited immensely from the now cheap and union free
| labor force, all thanks to the fascist police beating and
| arresting any unionist.
|
| There were also wealthy people during periods where only
| birth right could give you wealth, and those aristocrats
| would not hesitate to abuse of the population with
| violence.
|
| It is clear that the existence of wealthy people does not
| guarantee free and voluntary exchanges. If nothing, it
| usually pushes for the opposite.
| _0ffh wrote:
| > The possibility of "someone" becoming wealthier than
| others has no value to me.
|
| In a system of voluntary exchange ("capitalism") they can
| only become wealthier if they are freely given their
| wealth by _someone_ , even if that someone's not you.
|
| > I care much more about the possibility of people
| starving or living a terrible life due to lack of basic
| material needs.
|
| I hold with Kropotkin, we _are_ a social species. As long
| as there is sufficient wealth, people will be cared for.
| The best way to make sure that is the case is to maximize
| that wealth. That 's what free, voluntary exchange does.
| It's not a zero-sum game but it's always win-win. Only
| the economically illiterate would claim otherwise.
|
| > Capitalists thrived during Nazism and Fascism. An
| entire economy was born out of the extermination of the
| Jews, and capitalism made tons of profits out of it.
|
| Nazism and Fascism both were self-avowedly anti-
| capitalist Ideologies. Insofar as neither cared for peace
| nor for property rights, this self-assessment must be
| judged entirely correct.
|
| > There were also wealthy people during periods where
| only birth right could give you wealth, and those
| aristocrats would not hesitate to abuse of the population
| with violence.
|
| Hence not capitalist. I argue for voluntary exchange and
| your counter-argument is "thugs, murderers and slave
| drivers existed, therefore capitalism bad"?
|
| > It is clear that the existence of wealthy people does
| not guarantee free and voluntary exchanges. If nothing,
| it usually pushes for the opposite.
|
| That was not the argument. You got it exactly backwards.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > Nazism and Fascism both were self-avowedly anti-
| capitalist Ideologies. Insofar as neither cared for peace
| nor for property rights, this self-assessment must be
| judged entirely correct.
|
| This is just refuting historical truth without providing
| any evidence. It doesn't matter that Hitler used a kind
| of anticapitalis rethoric before getting in power. What
| happened once he did, is that the capitalist of the
| country got cheap and obedient labor force provided by
| the nazist police. They got rich out the war and the
| extermination of Jews as well.
|
| > Hence not capitalist. I argue for voluntary exchange
| and your counter-argument is "thugs, murderers and slave
| drivers existed, therefore capitalism bad"?
|
| No, not really. You argue for the possibility of becoming
| wealthy. I tell you that I don't think a right to become
| wealthier than others should exist, nor that people being
| wealthy is a guaranteed benefit for society, as shown in
| my examples.
|
| You also keep mixing capitalism and voluntary exchange,
| and again as I've proven you those are not necessarily
| linked. I restate this, capitalists thrived during nazi
| germany due to the subjugation of the labor force.
|
| > As long as there is sufficient wealth, people will be
| cared for.
|
| This has been disproven time and time again, you're
| ignoring the matter of wealth inequality. The existence
| of wealth improves the general life conditions of the
| people only if such wealth is properly distributed. All
| the reductions in poverty we've seen in recent times are
| due to the conquests of the social movements, taking from
| the wealthy things like healthcare, retirement, decent
| working hours, safety on the job, unemployment benefits,
| public education, etc.
| _0ffh wrote:
| That you do not agree with the definition of capitalism
| that was given at the origin of this exchange does not
| mean that I have to abide by yours.
|
| You can argue against your strawman-capitalism all you
| want, I do not care. If you insist that capitalism is not
| about protecting everyone's right to their property, I
| see no point in carrying on.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| That's not my definition, it's the Wikipedia definition.
| Where does yours come from?
|
| Also would you answer to my initial request to explain
| how transactions can be voluntary in a capitalist system
| where most people dont own property, the means of
| production.
| _0ffh wrote:
| Even the very same Wikipedia article you quote admits
| that central characteristics of capitalism include
| competitive markets, private property, property rights
| recognition, and voluntary exchange.
|
| Neither National Socialism nor Fascist corporatism had
| strong protection of
|
| - competitive markets: markets where heavily regulated
| and great parts of national production and ressources
| where directed and allocated by the government,
| preventing competition and free exchange
|
| - property rights: lots of property was outright stolen
| from their rightful owners, the means of production were
| ultimately controlled by the government
|
| - voluntary exchange: lots of people where forced into
| slave labor, which is decidedly involuntary
|
| So yes, these were state socialist societies, not
| capitalist ones.
| mftrhu wrote:
| Oh, you probably meant "state capitalist". The definition
| of _that_ fits to a tee.
|
| > State capitalism is an economic system in which the
| state undertakes business and commercial (i.e. for-
| profit) economic activity and where the means of
| production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises
| (including the processes of capital accumulation,
| centralized management and wage labor). [...] Other
| examples include Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew and Turkey,
| as well as military dictatorships during the Cold War and
| fascist regimes such as Nazi Germany.
| _0ffh wrote:
| Lol, "Marxist literature defines state capitalism as a
| social system combining capitalism with ownership or
| control by a state".
|
| Excuse me, when I respectfully decline that definition.
| What makes or breaks capitalism is private property,
| including and specifically of the "means of production",
| also called "capital goods".
|
| "Engels argued that the tools for ending capitalism are
| found in state capitalism", that's like saying that
| eating your steak well done gives you the tools for
| slaughtering the cow.
|
| OTOH, "It is not commonly realized that State Capitalism
| covers nothing more than what used to be called Planned
| Economy and State Socialism, and that State Capitalism,
| Planned Economy, and State Socialism diverge only in non-
| essentials from the classic ideal of egalitarian
| Socialism". At least one can find _some_ sensible
| definitions in the article.
| jostylr wrote:
| Look at where there were massive famines with people
| starving to death. Were those capitalist societies? How
| many people have starved to death in the semi-capitalist
| countries such as the US? How many starved to death in
| the Soviet Union, China, North Korea? When China pivoted
| to a kind of capitalism, did people start starving or did
| they start prospering? Allowing individuals to accumulate
| wealth by being of service is the key to general
| prosperity. This is the heart of capitalism.
|
| The more a society is capitalist, the more wealth gets
| created and that wealth is spread out to all. The less a
| society embraces capitalism, the more desperate the poor
| become. Inequality does increase with capitalism which is
| a problem for stability, but the government exacerbates
| that issue by imposing laws that prevent competition and
| take from the poor to give to the rich. In a freer
| society than we have in the US, it would be harder for
| the rich to become super-rich. They have to keep being
| useful in such a society.
| socialismisok wrote:
| Plenty of famines happened because if capitalism.
| Millions of people died in the Bengal famine. Ireland was
| starved, Cuba was starved.
|
| The dust bowl in the US was hugely disruptive and at
| least partially caused by capitalism.
|
| It's absurd to claim capitalism prevents starvation.
| public_defender wrote:
| That would not be an accurate label. Nothing you wrote
| implies any economic system. Of course the society you
| describe would allow for capitalism, but it equally allows
| other models.
| _0ffh wrote:
| > That would not be an accurate label
|
| ...in your estimation. I and many others would call it
| such, and with good reason. In our estimation it is
| capitalism that allows for other models, as long as they
| are peaceful and respect property rights.
|
| Nothing about capitalism hinders you to follow your
| social instincts. You are free to share your possessions
| with whomever you choose. You can jointly own whatever
| you want with whomever you want. That is capitalism.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| What else can you recommend reading on the topic?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Anarcho-Syndicalism by Rudolf Rocker
|
| Government in the Future by Noam Chomsky (essay/lecture)
|
| The Anarchist FAQ (Online)
| jostylr wrote:
| A book that made the idea of a lack of government believable
| and appealing to me is David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom.
| He presents a flushed out vision of a withered state and it
| is the anarcho-capitalist version of anarchy, the only
| version which I feel is realizable without force-based
| coercion.
|
| The idea is to envision a society which is stable, but has no
| government and yet not perfect people. There can still be
| theft, violence, laziness, polarizing differences of opinion,
| etc. but the society thrives despite the absence of a
| government and nimbly handles these problems. He presents a
| vision of how it could work. It is not a prescription since
| it is impossible to prescribe an anarchic society as there is
| nothing to prescribe to. The criminal justice system becomes
| a bunch of competing rights organizations, similar to
| competing insurance companies. It allows for economic
| evolution of laws as everyone can choose what kind of system
| they want to be governed by and conflicts of competing legal
| systems get negotiated and arbitrated. One can choose not to
| be governed by any laws, but if that individual comes into
| conflict with others, then there is no one to defend them.
| They are not automatically cast out for not being part of
| anything.
|
| Most other anarchic systems seem to assume unity of purpose,
| a good work ethic, a lack of criminality, and an inability to
| fundamentally dissent from what the larger group wants. They
| often get presented as more of a direct democratic government
| that everyone belongs to while Friedman's approach is
| literally a lack of any coercive government. There is no
| governing body that all must yield to, including the
| collective. The fundamental transactions between people are
| voluntary and coercion to produce societal needs is both
| unnecessary and rejected. I find it to be a believable
| society with the people we have.
| mattbuilds wrote:
| The idea of an anarcho-capitalist society functioning
| peacefully is pure delusion and ignores basically
| everything from history and observations of reality. It
| most importantly ignores the concept of power. There would
| be no free exchange at all. It would be all coercion all
| the time, an actual hellworld.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| warning, religion ahoy!
|
| "the duty of delight", which is the collected diaries of
| dorothy day.
|
| "rerum novarum" and "laborem execrens", papal encyclicals on
| labor and capital.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Yes and we've been taught from a young age that capitalism and
| democracy are joined at the hip. But when we look back we can
| see how capitalism accommodated itself quite nicely to
| domination starting from the early modern period.
| einpoklum wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by democracy. For people who mean
| a government by a parliament of elected representatives
| making laws and a centralized state government running the
| state by those laws - then that tends to go with capitalist
| relations of production; and it is an accessible and useful
| structure for commercial corporations, which will have their
| property ownership enforced by the state, and will not have
| to have continuing agreement of local populations to their
| activities.
|
| The dictionary says Democracy means: "Government by the
| people, exercised either directly or through elected
| representatives." - so there's already the question of
| decision by representative yes-or-no. Plus, there's the
| question of what the 'government' part means. Some Anarchists
| would say they oppose democracy because of it. Does it mean
| that decisions get enforced by a special social structure?
| Are decisions majoritarian? etc.
| incompatible wrote:
| I think anarchists typically support direct democracy, but
| oppose representative democracy, which gives the
| representatives excessive power.
|
| Any society will have to make decisions at some point which
| can't be left to individual preferences. E.g., we have a
| large natural forest, should it be preserved for nature, or
| cut down for timber and farmland? If left to individuals,
| the people who want to cut it down will win by default.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > should it be preserved for nature, or cut down for
| timber and farmland?
|
| Perhaps the main question would be what happens when
| people disagree with the decision, regardless of how it
| was taken. Many Anarchists would be concerned more with
| that than with the question of how such a decision is
| taken.
| public_defender wrote:
| It's sort of a different thought pattern than most of us
| are used to using. Imagine the anarchists vote: 49 for
| logging, 51 against. The question is then whether 51
| anarchists foresters will mobilize to stop 49 anarchist
| deforesters. Will there be a civil war? Will the 49 weigh
| the benefits of whole community over wood and yield? Will
| someone burn the chainsaws in the night? It's less about
| whether we vote directly or through an intermediary, and
| more about how we hold the community together (or don't)
| through tough decisions.
| kqr wrote:
| It's not just that representatives in a typical
| representative democracy wield disproportionate amounts
| of power, it's also that the people who are able to
| become popular enough to get a significant share of votes
| are people who have time and resources and connections
| for campaigning, PR, and so on. This is a very specific
| stratum of the population. It's an elective kind of
| aristocracy, basically.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| haha, i submitted a pdf for "capitalist realism" yesterday:
| https://files.libcom.org/files/[Mark_Fisher]_Capitalist_Real...
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| For some weird reason, people misunderstand the concept of
| anarchy, always using this word as a synonym for 'chaos'.
|
| In fact, anarchy is a theoretical and highly organized society
| that relies not on leadership and coercion to function, but on
| all members of society, who are educated and know their duties.
| For some weird reason, people believe it to be impossible, but we
| clearly see it happen in many circumstances, especially if you
| gather small-to-medium group of intelligent people together.
| none_to_remain wrote:
| >who are educated and know their duties.
|
| I think every ideology would work if everyone was simply
| obedient to the duties imposed on them by those ideologues.
| drummer wrote:
| Many years of brainwash from the slave masters have convinced
| the slaves that they need to be ruled because they cannot
| govern themselves individually.
| [deleted]
| pixl97 wrote:
| >especially if you gather small-to-medium group of intelligent
| people together.
|
| Hasn't everyone on HN read the Mythical Man-Month? Or, if
| you're a parent a corollary statement would be "The more boys
| you put in a group the faster the sum IQ reaches a negative
| number"
|
| Small groups tend to be self selecting and typically more
| compatible. Large populations are not. If you have one group
| that wants to piss in the river because it's close, and another
| group that does not want that because it is poisoning the
| water, there is going to be conflict. Now, this could be
| settled economically/infrastructurally by providing a sanitary
| sewer system, or by the down river group getting cholera and
| dying off, or the downriver group violently killing the upriver
| group off. But at the end of the day you'll have an loss of
| happiness cause by one group being dead, or both groups paying
| taxes so the system works.
|
| Anarchists tend to offer no solutions even for already solved
| problems, much less without introducing new ones.
| [deleted]
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Seems Kropotkin was always doomed to be dubbed a "revolutionary"
| (in the negative sense) purely by dint of his observations.
| Humans don't live "in nature". We live within systems we build.
| The cooperative struggle against a hostile environment naturally
| becomes one against the incumbent system [1]. The system
| therefore naturally mobilises to disrupt cooperation, to divide
| and disorient. And therein lies the paradox of digital
| communication, that the more we are connected - via the system -
| the more we are divided.
|
| [1] worth comparing to William James' "Moral equivalent of war"
| unity1001 wrote:
| > And therein lies the paradox of digital communication, that
| the more we are connected - via the system - the more we are
| divided.
|
| Its only because people are easily losing the sight what's
| important when the establishment manipulates them using
| emotional triggers. From nationalism to religion, from social
| issues to pop culture, everything is used to take people's
| attention away from economic issues.
| gnull wrote:
| My main takeaway from this is that the seemingly contradictory
| notions like "mutual help" and "competition" are just too vaguely
| defined, and exist on a wrong level of abstractions, to have any
| formal discussion about them.
| socialismisok wrote:
| Sometimes the initial introductions are, in fact, quite high
| level. You might need to dig more to understand the nuances.
| One blog is not going to get deep enough.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Dawn of Everything made the archaeological and anthro case for me
| in a compelling evidence based way
| socialismisok wrote:
| I never thought I'd see the day Kropotkin made the front page
| here! You love to see it!
| wan_ala wrote:
| It could tie into how neoliberal establishements are failing
| and people are looking for alternatives (which could be the
| reason that nazism is suddenly more popular). But yeah, I was
| pretty suprised seeing this post.
| rvense wrote:
| Sidenote: That's a really weird way of writing his first name.
| While the Russian does have a letter that visually resembles e
| (unicode: io), it is not a variation of the letter e as this
| transcription suggests, but invariably pronounced something like
| 'yo'. The name is pronounced "Pyotr", and of course corresponds
| to Peter, by which name Kropotkin was also known. I've no idea
| where this spelling comes from, but it's like writing Bladimir or
| Cergei instead Vladimir Sergey. Weird.
|
| PS: Read Kropotkin, he's good.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I'd say Potr would be a (technically) correct transcription,
| although it looks super weird.
|
| On pronunciation: "Pyotr" is most close, if you use the "y"
| just to note that the "p" is soft and not as a separate sound -
| i. e. "Pjotr" would be incorrect.
| [deleted]
| Onanymous wrote:
| I actually like this spelling. The sounds that have exact
| equivalents use the Latin alphabet and those that do not are
| replaced by the character's native system. Cause his name is
| not Pyotr or Peter or Pierre or whatever else. It is Petr
| indeed.
| dottedmag wrote:
| Well, it is Piotr. Russian P is not P, T is not T, R is not
| R.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Of all the choices[1], I've always been partial to the ISO 9 /
| GOST approach with Czech/Slovak-style diacritics (either
| version), even though those same diacritics make it impractical
| in most ASCII contexts. Just now I went to check the table and
| learned it actually prescribes e for <io>. Huh.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Russian#Transl...
| enriquto wrote:
| I find that even "Peter" sounds a bit strange... I've always
| read him as "Pierre", which is the name under which he signed a
| great deal of his works.
|
| Of course, "Piotr" is a monstrosity.
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