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Questions on Anarchism

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by mrNILEpat, Jun 29, 2013.

  1. mrNILEpat

    mrNILEpat Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Nov 27, 2012
     
    so I have some questions on anarchism and what some things mean. I know anarchists are obviously anti-capitalist and oppose private property. but what would abolishing private property do? I legitimately want to learn, im not trying to criticize or anything. ive been on the anarchist faq and such but its still kinda hard to understand. what would abolishing private property do and what is the problem with private property now? also another question on markets. I know laze fair capitalism means free markets but what is so bad with free markets. I know anarchists are against free markets and capitalism but why? how would goods be produced without markets? sorry if these seem like dumb questions, just trying to learn. :D
     

  2. sheep6665

    sheep6665 Active Member Forum Member


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    Aug 15, 2012
     
    It's not about "private property" altogether, the easiest way to explain it is using an example:
    X has his watch. It's his property. But he cannot have factory as it belongs to workers, because factory without workers don't work.
    The problem with private property is the fact that it's causing the greed to be main motivation for humans - owners don't care about workers, don't care about consumers, they care only about producing and selling as much stuff as they can make, so we have need-producing-marketing, shitty food, less efficient medicines, large social inequality(which produces tensions and conflicts) etc.

    As for L-F capitalism and free market - the problem is more complicated as some anarchists(an-communists) don't like it at all, and other(an-individualists) tend to see it as wrong, but they propose some reforms to make it work as it should.
    Discussion about which side is right is as senseless as arguing about "which colour is the best" or "is slug more awesome than snail".
    The main issues, used by both an-coms and an-ind critics are:
    -The fact you can earn money without working, even though most right wing politics(which support L-F capitalism) say you can't - it's about interest, dividends and similar source of money.
    -hypocrisy of the system - Lassiez-Faire capitalist economists oppose taxes using arguments that may be used to oppose rents
    -previous mentioned problem with private property
    -inefficient use of resources - some people have(for example) empty houses, that are never used, but homeless can't use them, same can be used for land etc.
    -supporting employer-employee hierarchy without dealing with obvious conflict in this line(employer always want to keep employee wage as low as it's possible, employee always wants rise)
    -risks connected with capitalists and anarchism - as some of the structure still exist, "anarchism" could quickly die, and turn into some sort of state
    -fact that private property cannot sustain in anarchist society without using violence to protect is - it's not about being pacifist, but it's better to avoid it - so the wealth would belong to the one with superior firepower
     
  3. Rebellious twit

    Rebellious twit Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jul 21, 2012
     
    this would explain it even more simple:

    there is a difference between private property and possesion

    private property could be: millions and millions of meters of land


    possesion: your clothes,your music,your phone,computer,mind,soul and shit :D .
     
  4. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    a bit easier:
    these are the means of production:
    buildings
    roads
    farmland
    technical equipment
    machinery
    tools & devices
    the knowledge how to work with them
    (marxist special:)
    natural resources
    soil

    if they are exclusively owned by an individual, we speak of private property on the means of production.
    if they are used to produce goods or services by an individual owner we speak of production.
    if this individual owner produces not only for himself but for the market to pursue profit, we speak of
    C A P I T A L I S M.

    the market is representing the actual need of non-producers and the offering of the producers,
    if there are more than one producer the market causes competition.
    competition causes the need for efficiency in production:
    the private owner/the capitalist has to produce more and cheaper goods.

    to achieve this, he employs workers or peasants to produce more than he himself alone could.
    still caring for his profit, he will not share the value of the produced goods equally with his workers, the
    market competition will reduce the workers share even further via the need for cheaper goods.
    from this moment on we speak of exploitation because the unpropertied workers don't earn the true value of their effords.

    exploitation and other aspects of capitalism provoked the workers movement, claiming their rights to whats rightfully theirs. this resulted amongst other less smart&exciting theories in A n a c h i s m...

    the alternative:
    the abolition of private property transfers the means of production into social property:
    so there is no longer a multitude of individual owners but a multitude of collective owners.
    the production to fulfil the demand/need is no longer forced to produce profit:
    the true value can be distributed to workers and non-workers according to the ol'marxist quote:
    FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITY TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS NEED

    the amazing results of the historical examples of abolishing private propertx can be learned in the spanish/katalonian revolution 1936, the russian revolution between 1917 'till 1923, please note, that these changes didn't ended because they malfunctioned, both revolutions were beaten down by conter-revolutionaries and fascists.
    but:
    I've posted the analysis of an obviously at least egalitarian society in neolithic asia minor, lasting around 1200 years - it's on the primitivism vs. anarchism thread.
     
  5. mrNILEpat

    mrNILEpat Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Nov 27, 2012
     
    So private property is basicly the individual ownership of the means of production(roads,buildings,factorys,land). Is house ownership private property? And if so what is the problem with that? You don't own and live in your house to exploit others through work and you don't own a house to make a profit(as you would if you owned a factory with workers)? *oh and thanks for the responses so quick :)
     
  6. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    exacly, you got it!
    what I forgot:
    "the worker and peasant" is a non-owner - he don't owns sufficient means of production to produce on his own, so he has to hire out his labour potential to produce the owner's profit and his own living.

    and I forgot completely to mention p e r s o n a l p r o p e r t y - everything you & me own that isn't "productive":
    your cd-collection, my glittering hoard of beer crown caps, john does winding sheet, uncle sams topper queen elizabeths crown.
    personal property can't be touched or expropriated rightfully for collective means - that would be theft.

    if you own a house and live in it - fine for you, it's personal property.
    if you own it, live in it and invite others to join you for free - you're my personal hero owning personal property.
    if you don't live in that house but tolerate squatters to move in - you're a saint owning personal property.
    BUT:
    if you own a house, live in it or live in another house & rent out a room, appartment or the whole building to somebody else - then it becomes p r i v a t e p r o p e r t y - because it produces value - you make a profit with it.

    certain means of production produce "consumers value" - everything concerning the very basics of human life like food, adequate clothing and sheltering under a roof. because of their fundamental necessity the aspect of private ownership over the means to produce them becomes a very ethical question.
    its very easy to exploit these basic needs:
    during a famine or natural desaster the profits made by selling food, clothing and shelter will explode because of the "market" - a high demand/need will unleash a price explosion.

    don't mention, it's your "duty" to ask and my delight to assist interested people to figure things out.
    and btw: there are no stupid questions... so don't worry about that.
     
  7. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    so this is the third part, the swirling chaos of "free market" - it's very difficult to keep the supject from spreading out into incomprehensibility and I am not very deep into anti-globalisation.
    so it would be nice to see some corrections or improvements to get the whole thing as transparent as possible.

    firstoff and quite fundamental:

    t h e m a r k e t is basically nothing but the relation between
    demand/need of the consumers and the offering of the producents.
    the market as such is pretty neutral, even an economy based on social property will have a market for everything individual collectivists need but don't produce themselves.

    the issue with the market starts, when capitalist interest wakes up it's immanent rules:
    abusing demand and offer for individual private interest or in the popular term: profit.

    next the journey to the free market:
    in the past the exploited organized into the workers movement, activists and intellectuals shaped theories about political economy and liberation, inspiring political consciousness and the vision of an alternative.

    the anticapitalist movement in the industrial centres soon became dangerous for the industrial economy and the bourgois state protecting it with anti-socialist laws and repression of unions and workersparties.
    There were strikes, rebellions of manufacture-workers, the Commune in paris and lyon, abolishing the french imperium with a peoples republic - they were beaten down by the cops and the military.

    to prevent further rebellions and revolutions, very limited social betterments were given to the unpropertied proletarians.
    organisations like the social democratic parties and some unions were allowed to participate in the political system.
    this participation corrupted these collaborators almost in an instant, they became reformist and promptly forgot about the necessary fundamental change, instead reformists started breeding out regulative theories like social market economy, workers participation (under capitalist control) and the institutions of the welfare state. the roman church invented social organisations to exorcise the "socialist demon".

    all these regulative measurments are meant to soften up the immanent conflicts of capitalism and to do so, many of these measures are limiting the "rights" of the owners of private property to earn maximum profit.
    capitalists have to respect payed hollidays, 8-hours day, health- and safety regulations, sick pay and maybe even retirement or disability arrangements.
    they have to pay value-added tax, import- or export taxes, income- and property taxes to finance the "social" state and it's infrastructure, adding to the taxes demanded from consuments and workers.

    all these extras are reducing the capitalist profit, and under the market-related competition many less successful economic undertakings are getting in trouble, small business and midsize undertakings vanish, forced to give up or to be swallowed by larger and more successful concurrents. marx called this process "accumulation of capital", he predicted an increasing monopolism and finally the breakdown of the capitalist system:
    it's economic death due to it's very own immanent conflicts and jungle-laws.

    others came up with neoliberalism, economic libertarianism, laizes faire & free market.
    basically they want to roll back the little compromise the liberals and democrats made to save the capitalist democracy - all these regulations demanding at least some social responsibility from the capitalists.

    free-, laizesfairesmarketeers and neoliberals demand to abolish "marking regulations", their fundamental demand:
    EVERYBODY ACCORDING TO HIS OPPORTUNITIES - this translates:
    if you own the means of production, you have to be "free" to do what you want with them, there is no limit, no ethics or morals, exploitation is just bad luck, poverty and mass misery nothing to worry about, the only thing that counts is success - profit by any means possible:

    reduction of the cost of production via technical/ staff rationalisation
    roll back of social security because of the costs they produce.
    market- and price domination via monopolism and corporatism:
    swallowing concurrents whenever possible, erasing small and middle business
    barely legal influence on politics, unions and politicians via financial support
    the same goes meanwhile for science and philosophy:
    intellectuals are "supported" if they come up with "freethinking" theories in support of "free market"
    tax laws or protective social measurements are constantly under attack, become limited or completely erased.
    wages are reduced
    working hours raised
    the threat of unemployment becomes a weapon to keep workers in line
    production and transfer of goods and resources without any respect for nature conservation and ecology.
    production is transferred to low-income locations, where workers rights or social welfare are non-existent.
    natural resources in second- and third world areas are exploited without any thought about the consequences.
    financial and economic support for dictatorships and regimes suppressing their population.
    governments are manipulated to tolerate the excessive exploitation without tax liability,
    if they aren't willing to collaborate, they are simply overthrown and replaced by willing collaborators.

    fazit: they ask for the jungle to take over - only the stong survive...
     
  8. mrNILEpat

    mrNILEpat Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Nov 27, 2012
     
    So basically the free market is bad because it allows corporations to be free to do whatever they want by any means nessessary to make a profit. and because we are talking about for profit businesses their main goal is to make a profit, not help people with the actual products they produce. the corporation will be free even if that means enslaving children in sweat shops to make shoes for America or cutting down 70% of the worlds trees (just for example). what do advocates of the free market propose in defense? what are their answers to these questions? or do they just think that these things wouldn't happen.
     
  9. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    that depends very much on which sect of free marketers one might research, from the early manchester capitalists (seeing "the (colonialist) state" as an eternal troublemaker for world peace and the heavens of (tax-)free world trade) to the scientific economists or weirdo-philosophers like ayn rand who tend - in short - to raise economic "freedom" to a very tenet of human existence - of course "only" for those able to play the game, but they just claim that everybody has the equal chance and opportunity to be a player.
    i'm not sure how deep i could dive into this trash on this forum without provoking some hebephrenic idiot to blame me for promoting the free market crime, so:
    there is some a-capitalist article on wikipedia and if you follow the mentioned names and theories you can picture it out for yourself.
    sadly it's not only "corporations" - the capitalist trap starts with the single entrepreneur taking advantages from his/her less able or gifted fellow neighbors - the small farmer employing farm labourers to raise his own production for the market, keeping the relatively small profit from paying them less than their work is worth. of course everybody is free to agree to such contracts and most will have to just to fulfill their own personal needs as a hostage of capitalism, but if one spins this "banal/trivial" further, you'll might end up with a big corporation feeding on sweatshops and the worst the market has on demand and offer.
    i think it's important to realize that it's not only the cliche`"corporation" thats representing the mess called capitalism, it's the very root we should have a sharp eye upon - one fine (?) day one might have to decide for or against an anti-capitalist stance - thats when the seriousness of the stance is proven - or not...
     
  10. hobolosophy

    hobolosophy Active Member Forum Member


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    Aug 5, 2013
     
    We Germans are a funny bunch, aren't we? We know everything and are perfect in all we do. But those filthy beer drinking low class hooligans on this forum don't do what we tell them. Like the rest of the world. Even if we have their best interest in mind. What do you expect from them? They are not on our holy level. "Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen!" Sarcasm off!
    This topic is about anarchism in general and one of the main aspects of anarchism for me is that nobody stands above another person. Let's call this equality.
    Or for you again in this way: e q u a l i t y. (It really tickles my OCD when you write like that. Please stop it! Or put at least a . between the letters.)
    You shouldn't use anarchism to satisfy your elitist desire. I know, I know it's hard to wrap your head around it. But it can be very nice to leave the Germanic elite bubble sometimes and to allow other people to visit you on your supreme level.
     
  11. vAsSiLy77

    vAsSiLy77 Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member Forum Member


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    Jun 21, 2010
     
    you dummy, the lass isn't "german" at all and your "sarcasm" is just plain stupid, somewhere on the level of this senile "anti-semite", off-topic and trolling too.

    there were at least two thread "closed" by an idiot and his deficits at knowledge and reception, maybe even plain personal dislike too, calling him "hebephrenic" might be a bit hasty, but it's no secret that this guy abuses his ownership on this forum out of his weird follies.
    just ask your recently banned scene queen...
    maybe you should climb up a step or two from wherever you are that far below the minimum requirements for the chattering lifestyler too, read a bit here and there, maybe travel a bit too... so one day you might have to say something constructive.
     
  12. punkmar77

    punkmar77 Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member


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    So how did this thread become an attack on the mods exactly?
     
  13. vAsSiLy77

    vAsSiLy77 Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member Forum Member


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    did it?
    you are free to see it like that while i just meant to state the obvious and wonder how "the tone of debates on this site" up in the moderation forum will work out in the future... especially after someone got the idea that posting early british punk vids amongst them shitty exploited or making fun of david icke - is promoting greyzone bands or conspicrazy theories...
    the lass is question is quite unique in her very reasonable depiction of the dreaded monster of capitalism, so it isn't that unthinkable that the opportunity of getting rid of the arrogant/elitist/nobbis/better-than-thou-troublemaker on the deads stage gets used per "notification on the moderation forum" some poodle used on the "helping cops" mess?
     
  14. hobolosophy

    hobolosophy Active Member Forum Member


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    Aug 5, 2013
     
    That is funny! Considering that reading and traveling are two of my main activities. But feel free to count all the books in your life and the places you have been to. We can compare them. After that we can compare our penis length since you like to take stuff to a personal level? Seems like you and your Annie friend need to boost your egos. Sorry that you think I attacked her and that you feel butthurt about it.I just doubt that a forum about anarchism is the right place for that. That is all I wanted to say. And I don't know which guy closed which topic here and blablabla. Why do you have 552 post when you don't like the forum? Feel free to post "better" stuff. I just don't think that spreading elitism is what this forum or any forum in this world needs.

    EDIT: Thank you for standing up for my scene queen! But I'm sure that she can fight her own battles. She isn't even blocked anymore as far as I know. I'm sure that we can go back to normal posts and topics when you and Annie stop spreading their elitism everywhere.
     
  15. Spike one of many

    Spike one of many Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member Forum Member


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    I presume you're referring to mymarkx. But now why would you insult someone by calling them senile? You're not an ageist, are you?? Just wondering...
     
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