Saturday 19 March 2011

The Economics of Anarchy

'The Economics of Anarchy', at Anarchist Writers

This article from a couple of years ago offers an informative insight into various economic concepts and recommendations promoted by Anarchism, along with Anarchism's long-standing and fundamental critique of Capitalism. Referring regularly to French Anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's timeless quote "Property is theft!", the article reminds the reader what is meant by that radical phrase and how it applies to the world of work. Particular attention is given to how self-Management, Mutualism and libertarian Communism would function differently from Capitalism once workers take control, while treating Collectivism as a bridge between Mutualism and Communism "with elements of both".

The writer of this article in 2009 observes:

Capitalism in crisis (again!) and the failure of state socialism could not be more clear. Social democracy has become neo-liberal (New Labour? New Thatcherites!) while this year also marks the 20th anniversary of the collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe. With its state capitalism and party dictatorship, Stalinism made the disease (capitalism) more appealing than the cure (socialism)! In this anarchists should be feel vindicated – the likes of Bakunin predicted both these outcomes decades before they became reality.


The prediction the above writer is referring to is embodied in Russian Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin's likewise timeless quote: "…[F]reedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice… Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality".

Here is the link again: 'The Economics of Anarchy', at Anarchist Writers

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

i do not know much about anarchism; so. i'l stay awy from discussing it.

at this time i wish to point out that personal supremacism, from which rises, discrimination, racism, meritocracy, warfare, oppression is the greatest evil to have befallen us this far.

i suggest that ego-supremacism arose at latest 10 k yrs ago. shamans, sorcerers, magicians, wizards were the first practitioners of that art; later joined by priests adn 'nobolity'.

and since that time we had been divided, broadly, into a clero-noble class and servant class of people.

such a division is quite obvious in india and u.s. altho in u.s. there are many classes and also voelker; which makes ruling such regionals frighteningly easy.

thus, i suggest, we need first of all to erase personal supremacism. ethnic and religious supremacism wld fall then peacefully and naturally. tnx
bozh

Balkan Ⓐnarchist said...

Well Bozhidar, you say that you don't know much about Anarchism. I can tell you that Anarchism is definitely against all forms of supremacism you mentioned, be it racial, religious or class, as it strives for a 'stateless society' made up of free and equal individuals, where no-one holds the monopoly in any sphere of life. How Anarchists imagine that will come about has been discussed since the time of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin (mentioned in my article), when they laid out the ideological foundations of Anarchism in the 19th century, along with their recommended economic systems, such as Socialism, Mutualism, etc.

You're right about supremacism and egoism; they make someone feel that they are fundamentally worth more than others, either based on skin colour, geographic origin, how they worship or how much money they earn — or merely inherited. Such notions in the hands of powerful people can cause inequality to arise within societies leading to social divisions, e.g. a class system, which Anarchists deeply believe is "repugnant to a free, democratic society" (Proudhon's words).

You suggest that if "personal supremacism" was erased, then "ethnic and religious supremacism" would follow suit and fall "peacefully and naturally". That reminds me of Eckhart Tolle's teachings about liberating one's soul from bondage to the "ego", from his book 'The Power of Now'. And IMO, that is more possible to achieve nowadays in the age of the computer and internet, in which information and knowledge can be shared all over the world and accessed more quickly and easily than ever before.

Knowledge is power Bozhidar, and "The Times They are a-changing!"

Anonymous said...

alan, thanks for ur reply.
in folk usage "anarchy" means lawlessness. and even the dictionary defines it as lawlessness.

for that reason i use the word egalitarianism; such movement or even a political party wld strive to create over decades or even centuries an ideally idyllic society.

as i see it, we only have two structures of society to fully develop: an ideally inegalitarian and the other ideally idyllic one; however, not an utopian one.

presently, nearly all 'democratic' lands [means: beware, the symbol denotes false symbolic value] appear headed for an ideally unequal structure of society.

it shld be noted that until one point of time, say, 15k yrs ago we were highly civil to one another or else if we behaved then as we do now, we wld not have survived.

with rise of shamanism and organized religion, our very civilized structure of society began bit by bit to be destroyed by the priestly class of people.

the process may have taken centuries or millennia, but by 8k yrs we already had god kings in mesopotamia, slavery, serfdom, warfare, jails for, 'bad' people, privatization of land/governance, prostitution, torture, 'laws' [diktats] and all kinds of injustice!

present 'democracies' may or may not want to restore ancient priestly governance-- they do, tho, want obtain a permanent privatization of governance and 'law making' and thus utter control of army, spy agency, police, judiciary, etc.

in this connections, it is interesting to note that until just 200+ yrs hopis, haydas, crees, apaches, et al had great civic civilizations.

they had no taxes, jails, prostitution, spy agencies, police, army, laws, priests, judges, schools, 'books', experts, money-- the 'poor souls' merely had tutoring and guidance.

when priests arrived and saw how these noble people lived, they were horrified.

such a good exemplum had to be destroyed or the priests wld be superfluous. and they did utterly destroy such civilizations.

let's also note that ulema [body of mullahs] priests, rabbis, shaman control utterly or to a high degree at least four bn people.

this means: let's get political; i.e., set up an antipodal governmental party to the one we have now.
hopefully such a party wld wrench a few pious souls from priestly ownership! tnx
bozh. i[j] pi[j] i bi vesela, tako sam ja svojoj majci nekoc govorio!

Anonymous said...

i think that egalitarianism builders in SU had to industrialize to deter or prevent fascist avowed destruction of any such society.

SU not only broke into pieces, but became largely fascist after SU dissolution.

let us recall that socialism builders were surrounded by nuclear missiles-- fascism builders were not and were econo-diplo-militarily much stronger.
smthing had to give.
with relentless demonization of egalitarian builders, emplacement of missiles at their borders, domestic fascism, etc., gorbachev finally caved in.

he loved his people more than egalitarianism.

what anarchists, et al do not espy is the fact that u cannot make a person a humane one in just decades.

w.o. caring-sharing-humane people u cannot have a just society.

in fascist lands, such as u.s., with 99.99% of its pop being deeply fascist, it takes little effort to maintain or further develop fascism with many classes, allow many cults, billionaires.

thus, why not allow free speech. and why shld, say cuba, allow fascists, aide by foreign fascists and cia allow free speech?
i wldn't either! bozh