According to a recent survey at ZeroHedge.com, Americans age 18-29 respond negatively on net to the word “capitalism” (47/46), versus a net favorable (49/43) response to “socialism.”
A lot of the blame for response this can be laid at the feet of the capitalists themselves. As I’ve said many times, if the “free market” meant what capitalist apologists mean by it, I’d hate it myself. Young people constantly hear “free market capitalism” used as if it were one word. And hear see politicians, corporate spokespersons and media talking heads explaining that stuff like patent-inflated drug prices, skyrocketing CEO pay and stagnant wages, the Keystone XL corporate welfare scam and the Bain Capital model of strip-shop capitalism are all parts of “our free enterprise system.”
Twenty-somethings are presumably reacting to the connotations “capitalism” = “everyone gets screwed over so the rich can get richer, and “socialism” = “people are treated like human beings.” These connotations are promoted by both mainstream coalitions in our society; the only difference is people like Romney talk like it’s a Good Thing for people to get screwed over to make the rich richer.
Meanwhile, the dirty little secret of the Democratic side is that all these “progressives” promoting state intervention to make capitalism less onerous to those under its yoke (aka “help working families”) are just another wing of the same capitalist ruling class. The main reason they do this, and the main reason they expanded the social safety net under FDR and LBJ, is to stabilize capitalism — to enable it to extract profits on a more sustainable basis on the long run.
As Marx said of the Ten-Hour Day law in Britain, the primary function of “progressive” legislation by the capitalist state is to overcome Prisoner’s Dilemma problems among individual capitalists and force them to act in the collective interest of capital — in his words, to come to an agreement on the manuring of their fields so individual farmers don’t strip the soil in the interest of short-term profit.
I like to depict conservatives and liberals as farmers. The conservative farmer thinks she’ll come out ahead giving her livestock short rations, working them to death and replacing them. The liberal thinks she’ll get a higher margin in the long run by taking care of them and working them in moderation. What the Democrats and Republicans don’t tell us is that they both represent different factions of capital — both of them interested in us primarily for our services as livestock.
This is a huge opportunity for us on the libertarian Left to propagate the meme of freed markets as an egalitarian force against corporate power and plutocracy.
This target demographic, for the past several weeks, has had its YouTube videos repeatedly interrupted by Thomas Peterffy’s pearl-clutching at the idea of equality as if it were an abomination straight out of the Communist Manifesto. They’re wide open to be exposed to the truth: Present levels of inequality exist because billionaires, CEOs and corporate welfare queens are the primary beneficiaries of state intervention in the market.
What’s happened is, the 18-29s have bought into the meme that what we have now (corporate plutocracy) is what naturally happens when there’s no state interference in the market. Because neither the Democratic nor the Republican wing of the corporate ruling class has any interest whatsoever in challenging this misconception, these young people have predictably decided that Western European-style social democracy isn’t so bad after all. Of course! If I thought the only alternatives were the kind of banana republic people like Tom Delay and Dick Armey want, and German-style work hours and a social safety net, I’d choose social democracy myself.
So we need to be telling as many people as possible that these are not the only alternatives. We need to be promoting the hell out of the meme — something many have yet to hear for the first time — that the state is the chief culprit behind the system of corporate plutocracy we have now. We need to share the truth — carefully concealed by both Obama and Romney, that it’s the capitalists’ state.
Translations for this article:
- Russian, Ну конечно же они ненавидят капитализм.
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, Of course they hate capitalism, Addison, Vermont Eagle, 11/15/12
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A few things:
-The libertarian Left includes anti-market types as much pro-market types. Not a bad thing by any means, but just something to keep in mind.
-One thing to highlight is the origins of the system itself, what various reformers and radicals were attack when they attacked 'capitalism'-and why they opposed rent, interest, and profit.
-Even among socialists who weren't anarchists, one is impressed by the anti-government tone of their works. Well, more skeptical than anti-government, but that is how it sounds to modern ears! That they sought to make the state accountable implies they did not think it a benevolent institution by itself. In this sense, democratic socialism can be thought of as state socialism. Another example is to be found in Clarence Darrow's "Industrial Conspiracies". In it, he voices some support for safety legislation passed regarding the logging industry. But, he wasn't enthusiastic about it; what he really wanted was worker control. After all, the workers could manage their concerns better than any bureaucrat or capitalist!
-One curious thing: In the now infamous Milton Friedman's program, "Free to Choose", Michael Harrington pointed out the existence of tariffs and the land giveaways to the railroads. Whatever else one could agree or disagree with, the fact that Milton Friedman downplayed it is telling…
-Don't ask me to write the history of all this, at least not for the forseeable future.
Just some random points.
Er, a few typos:
-"were attacking", not "were attack"
-wanted to add "as distinct from state socialism", not "as state socialism"
That is certainly one way of conceptualizing it. I always thought panarchy is how a stateless society would work out in practice, not anarchy as such.
I'd caution against treating the word "free market" and "capitalism" equivocally.
"Individualist Anarchist", sigh.
Not an oxymoron. Not everyone's cup of tea, but alright.
Like how "anarcho-capitalism" is not an oxymoron? Alright.
I wouldn't say that anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron per se. But it does certainly pacify (maybe subordinates is better?) the concept of "anarchism" – to such a point that, if we were Martian sociologists looking into a fourth generation ancap social structure, I would be hard pressed to call it "anarchy."
To be fair, I don't think this "passivity" is unique to ancaps, that potentiality is found within all social structures that identifies a desired "revolutionary cessation point" or enjoys a stability past the second or third generation.
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No…that is an oxymoron. Individualist anarchism is not an oxymoron. Benjamin Tucker & Lysander Spooner (as well as the other American anarchists) had something far different in mind. They predated Rothbard by at least half a century, maybe more.
For more clarification, find "An Anarchist FAQ" on either Infoshop.org or anarchism.pageabode.com; read the sections concerning individualist anarchism; and then come back later.
Then we can talk about this.
I am familiar with those passages from AFAQ. They are similar to Berkman’s begrudging admission that individualists and mutualists are anarchist, just not very popular or revolutionary anarchists.
I am not arguing that anarchism and capitalism are compatible. With broader definitions and additional relevant considerations regarding the terms “capitalism” and “anarchism”, ancapism is certainly rendered self-contradictory or incapable of effectively critiquing ethical, cultural and structural power – aka oxymoronic. This is why I claim that ancapism , with each passing generation, becomes more and more state-full.
Otoh, I was arguing from the pov of “per se”. Intrinsically or within its own language, narrative tradition or recognized puzzle/solution system, it is not self-contradictory. Ancapism is firmly and self-confidently in the Classical Liberal tradition, just with Liberalism’s admissible violations of the “presumption of liberty” removed.
This tradition, or at least the aspects that are stressed the most by ancaps, tracks, by my lights, the following story arc: 1. Right of Conscience, 2. Negative Liberty, 3. the eclipse of public life (liberty of the ancients) by private life (liberty of the moderns), 4. property, regarded not only as the intersection of conscience and privacy (self-ownership), but also as an ordering or dispute mitigating principle that identifies points of deference between actors, 5. “Authority” is defined as agent that initiates force that violates the “stoic peace” of a property structured negative liberty and denying the “rights of conscience”, 6. Using Weber, the “state” is then defined as the institutional agency with a territorial monopoly on this authority.
So within this story or tradition, Anarchism is still defined “as against authority”. Anarchy is still defined as social system “without a state”. And an Anarchist is still regarded as “one who is against the state” by denying the legitimacy of authority.
Worker Cooperatives need to the be rallying cry.
I see. Interesting to think about.