You're viewing a single thread.
I'd encourage you to expand your worldview - a lot of problems we attribute to capitalism are mostly because of hierarchy.
Capitalism is fundamentally hierarchy established in property rights. Doing away with hierarchy does away with Capitalism. Unless, of course, you're arguing for Anarcho-Communism or something.
Not only capitalism entirely based on the hierarchy of ownership, but it also reinforces already existing social hierarchies as those in power receive more profits and capital, and thus more power and influence in a broader society. You cannot say hierarchy is bad and be pro capitalism. Leftist ideologies are ways to try to democratize the economy, which flattens hierarchy. Anarchism is inherently anti capitalist.
This is the neuance. Could there be a fair form of capitalism? It depends upon the systems and the people that run them. Centralisation of ownership is the next step beyond the centralisation of power, because after a while they become intrinsically the same. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, absolute wealth corrupts absolutely.
But also, the stock markets which can be beneficial are also forms of glorified gambling where the house always wins, the commodification of the housing market, the silly notion of shell and shelf companies (easiest, most effective way of side stepping regulations and laundering money), debt slavery, the price gouging of life saving medicine, the race to the bottom where costs, quality of product and salaries need to be cut, where the line between product and service becomes thinner for every day to the point where you retain less and less ownership by each year, which you can't really blame anyone for, because all of these systems are designed to be a constant, churning, soul killing rat race, turning the pace of life to a literally unlivable speeds, which also reveals that even the ones up in the hierarchy become degenerate with greed, mostly because they live so far up that their human brains can't fathom the effect they have down the chain, because it goes against their interests.
Instead of then going on another witch hunt, we need to look at these systems and the effects they have on the human psyche.
But hey, that's just my take.
The word you're looking for is "commerce".
No, that's not it. You don't need all the gunk I wrote about to have commerce. In fact, you can still have commerce without it.
You strike me as one of those guys who thinks capitalism defines the concept of money and markets.
No there cannot be a fair form of capitalism because it is centered on exchange. You have to center your life on turning your time into a profit to afford the whole rest of society's product also sold at a profit, at its most basic level it is unsustainable.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Like the idea of shell and shelf companies is a capitalist concept, that and mother companies, daughter companies, etc.
I particularly dislike shell and shelf companies, because they are almost always used to sidestep law and regulations, as well as being used for money laundering. It's a system whereby you can easily move around money, back and forth, up and down, to the point where the money has been obsfucated in so many accounts that it requires a large team of exonomists AND all the accounts to figure out wrongdoing.
Because of this you could make a ton of profit off human trafficking, put that money into a south African shelf company, launder it for like a max 30% and boom: legal tender.
Capitalism causes tons of economic crime that can never be solved.
Hierarchy is baked into capitalism. Your take is incorrect.
I think so too. If there is hierarchy someone will abuse it. But i also think that capitalism creates structures of hierarchy in itself.
Nah, the problems are due to capitalist economic relations and systemic pressures these relations create in society.
Problems of hierarchy that we don’t have a solution for, unfortunately; and I say that honestly.
No system of society I have ever seen proposed truly eliminates the issues of power hierarchy. Sometimes, they even make them worse.
Wouldnt a communist society not have a hierarchy because its classless, moneyless and stateless
It declares itself to be classless, moneyless, and stateless. Just like terrorists call themselves rebels, and dictatorships call themselves democracies.
Ultimately, I’m looking for a lot more than a declaration or wish, a napkin blueprint that reads “This machine grants wishes!”. I’m looking for a proven track record of success.
How does one design something that hasn't been built before?
That's not the question. The question is "How does one BUILD something that hasn't been built before?"
No matter how detailed the designs, any project manager can tell you that a plan ends up changing as it hits certain realities, and a system of governance, even for a small country, is going to be many times more complicated than anything most people have ever worked on. We've already seen several examples of the results, and they failed spectacularly. You don't get to look at them and say "They don't count" or "They're not TRUE scotsmen."
I'm not doing a no true Scotsman, or saying things don't count. I'm saying that you cannot claim something to be a failure wholesale without analyzing what broke.
If you have a plane, and it fails because the screws became loose on the wing, you know what went wrong and have an idea of how to fix it, even if the results were catastrophic. You cannot then say that planes cannot exist.
I'm not claiming planes cannot exist. I'm saying that (assuming this is pre-wright-brothers) there's no proof yet (metaphorical) planes can exist, so it's foolish to criticize our current methods of travel via cars and horses. By deepening the critiques of capitalism (a system I know to have flaws), you're making the claim "It's SO stupid to drive from Ohio to New York, when you could FLY" in a world that hasn't yet established flying is even possible.
It could be that the solution is "Tighten the wing screws a bit more", or it could be that the screws will always come apart from the tension, and it's simply a doomed invention. Ultimately, we'd still need a better proof of concept to devote ANY mental energy to it.
Not quite analogous. We know many problems with Capitalism, and we know many aspects of leftist organization absolutely work. We know what parts historically did not, and we also know that these issues are far from necessary for building a leftist structure.
You're arguing that there's no point in improving the plane and fixing what is broken when we still have cars and horses.
For your point that it could be that the screws can never be tightened, or a solution without screws cannot be found, is not an argument against tightening the screws or coming up with an alternative method, despite pretending that's a valid reason alone. In fact, in Engineering, it can be known what forces will be applied to screws in flight and as such it can be predicted what is required.
Essentially, you can use previous knowns to solve for unknowns, rather than assuming everything is simply a blind guess.
we know many aspects of leftist organization absolutely work. We know what parts historically did not, and we also know that these issues are far from necessary for building a leftist structure.
Facts not in evidence. Don’t invent assertions as truth.
You're arguing that there's no point in improving the plane and fixing what is broken when we still have cars and horses.
I’m going to expect an apology for deliberately putting words in my mouth. You know very well I didn’t say this.
The Wright brothers did not pull commuters into their untested inventions. If you can test and refine without harming or harassing people, do so; otherwise, keep it to yourself.
There are mountains of papers written on the success of Socialist and Socialist-adjacent structures. Worker Co-operatives are more stable and provide greater happiness to the Workers within, for example. Democracy within the workplace also has great levels of success when tried, and we've found that liberal democracy surrounding 2 party systems is far less democratic than multiparty, ranked choice systems.
You deliberately argued that you must wait for something to exist before you are willing to adopt it, rather than change any given situation.
Now we reach the pinnacle of your argument: "I'm personally okay in the given system, so I don't care if other people wish to change it." It's fine if everyone agrees with you, but what happens if you get out voted? Are you still going to argue for maintaining the status quo as disparity rises and climate change dooms us all?
Yes, we do. It's called anarchism. It's literally what it is for.
Under anarchism, whoever holds the most guns and food, and is the most ruthless, holds the power. Try to create a vacuum by destroying government, and someone else will claim it.
That is what anarcho capitalism is. But in this case some people, who hold the most gun and food, have more power than the others. So there is hierachy again. True Anarchism wants to prevent that. A lot of good explanations here :) https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/
I'm no Anarchist, but that's not what Anarchism is. Anarchism is a fully developed horizontal system, rather than vertical. The idea that Anarchism is simply "no rules" is an unfounded stereotype, there's lots of Anarchist theory.
While I personally think it's very difficult to achieve, it wouldn't be for the reasons you've listed. Simply destroying government isn't an Anarchist ideal, building up parallel structures like networks of Mutual Aid to replace the state and make it redundant is Anarchist praxis.
And what precisely prevents people from organizing into hierarchies again?
Anarchists believe that if horizontal power structures are in place, it becomes difficult to go against that current. Ie, if everyone has power, in order to gain more power than another, one must require people willing to give up their power to submit to them in order to push against others. This theoretical group would also have to be strong enough to go against the rest of the public.
It's similar to why Communists believe once Communism is globally achieved, there wouldn't be mechanisms for Capitalism to come back, just like Monarchism is almost nonexistant today.
Yet, that's not how real world actually works is it. Humanity grew out of small scale societies that operate the way you described, and then inevitably every large society ends up creating hierarchies. And societies that have hierarchies appear to consistently outcompete those that do not. It's not like this is a hypothetical discussion, we have thousands of years of human history to look at and see what forms of organization work in practice. Communists believe that there need to be explicit mechanisms that allow the working class to hold power and prevent regressions into capitalism.
I'm not an Anarchist, I'm just explaining misconceptions about Anarchism. You ironically lack Materialism in your analysis, with several instances of you claiming hierarchy simply appears, without analyzing the mechanisms of why.
Additionally, society has never been organized historically the way modern Anarchists desire it to be, primitive Communism is not what Anarchists, except for the fringe Anarcho-Primitivists, argue for. Again, they want strong horizontal organization, filled with decentralization. It isn't an arbitrary rejection of organization period.
All in all, I do think you can do better. Rather than simply saying things "appear to organize in certain manners," question the material conditions that changed organizational structures, and analyze why you think specific examples of horizontal organization posited by Anarchists would regress into hierarchy.
I'm well familiar with the argument Anarchists make, I'm just pointing out that it appears to be divorced from reality. I'm also not claiming that hierarchy simply appears. I even provided a link in a different comment explaining why hierarchies become necessary for any complex organization https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
My argument is basically that hierarchies appear because they are effective, and if the current system was somehow overthrown, and this flat society was created, then we'd see hierarchies start forming because like minded people would recognize their value. Once that process starts people who choose to organize in this fashion would have competitive advantage over those who do not. This is just a process of natural selection at work.
If you're taking a materialist approach, you would recognize that hierarchy was more effective than primitive communism, not Anarchism. You'd have to argue against modern propositions of flat organization, not just anarcho-primitivism. I'm sure many Anarchists would agree with you that hierarchical forms of structure are generally more effective than Anarcho-Primitivism, but would disagree that hierarchy is necessary or even better than modern Anarchist theory.
I'm well aware of Marx's rejections of Anarchism, I just think that since Marx is a human and could not predict modern Anarchist theory, modern Marxists should argue against modern Anarchism, rather than historical.
Under anarchism, whoever holds the most guns and food, and is the most ruthless, holds the power.
Mate, that's how it works under every system, especially capitalism. The whole point of anarchism is to defuse that authority.
You just described neofeudalism and "anarcho"-capitalism. Those don't have anything to do with anarchism, just americans muddying the waters by trying to confuse semantics.
Nothing would prevent people with anarcho-capitalist mindset from doing these things under anarchism. That's the whole problem with the idea. Anarchists make this fundamental assumption that vast majority of people think just like them, and if the state was somehow destroyed then it's all magically just ponies and rainbows.
People peddling anarchism need to explain why hierarchies keep arising in human societies over and over again. Anarchism is where humanity started and how small tribal societies live. However, we have yet to see any large society function that way for obvious reasons https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm