If there is one fact our collective history clearly reveals it is that large, centralized nation-states are the worlds most terrifying institutions. The 20th century alone is testament to this. The rise of fascism brought a premature end to nearly 100 million lives. The rise of the Bolsheviks tells a tale of an increasingly oppressive regime addicted to power. State capitalism and the rise of neo-liberal economics in the west are equally disastrous, responsible for a century of perpetual warfare.

Public intellectual Randolph Bourne once wrote, “war is the health of the state.” In the last century the machines of war reached frightening heights of power. The production of nuclear weapons can end all life as we know it. States may cause the greatest extinction in all of Earth’s history. This — the end of our species and countless others — is a real and looming threat.

The state is a system of power and domination. Such a monopoly serves to institutionalize the creeds of racism, sexism, class division, protectionism, biocentrism and more. This is true even in the most “democratic” of nations, including the United States. Such archism deserves abolition. The state is damned.

Yet, here in the fog, there too exists our beautiful struggle.

There is a great tradition in human history: Liberation. We long to be free. Human action continues to prove that with agency we can do great things for one another. We continue to labor, create, preserve and exercise goodwill.

Our inclined labor will produce a world where the children of humanity will live unbound by chains, where no fire or whip will meet their flesh. There will be no need to pledge allegiance to a nation, but all the reason to imagine a world of real and lasting peace. Not a world of dreamers, but a world of contracts, liberated economics and the splendor of the human condition. The peace of common interest, wildness and mutualism.

We must remember this. We must always remember those who risked and sometimes lost their lives and freedom for such an order. We must remember to love those who raised liberty’s hammer. Those who broke down the walls that caged us. We must remember so light will ever conquer darkness — so liberty will no longer be a simple flame, but a piercing, radiant torch.

We will be free. We will face the world without fear. We will stand together and howl into the face of those who wish to reign over us. We will ever challenge their rule. We will continue our embrace of liberty. Global movements have ignited. Join hands, unite the riot — coordinate and cultivate the free society. As we enter the new year, breath deep, let the winter air fill your lungs. Know that you are an animal, that you are alive and demand your freedom. Damn those who wish to deny you. Stare into the dark night and howl. Howl!

a modern politico-economic theory favouring free trade, privatization, minimal government intervention in business, reduced public expenditure on social services, etc

There’s a wide range of anarchist views and types of anarchism. Some of which largely or entirely reject economies based on notions of free exchange or free trade. Anarcho-communism and anarcho-primitivism come to mind. They tend to favor gift economies and oppose market economics. There are forms of anarchism like mutualism and left-wing market anarchism that do support free trade and markets. Their conception of free trade and markets is not neo-liberal however. These types of anarchism involve worker control and opposition to usury in some cases.

The related notion of privatization is another supposed feature of neo-liberalism that anarchists allegedly also agree with. There is a huge problem with this accusation. Anarchists favor the abolition of capitalist private property. A faulty assumption at work is that the government sphere and public sphere are the same thing. It’s possible to advocate “privatization” in the sense of non-government or non-state control/ownership without ditching the idea of public space. The kind of corporate capitalist privatization favored by neo-liberals is also not what anarchists support. A related point to be made is that neo-liberal “privatization” tends to involve just outsourcing a government monopoly to a private corporation. This corporation is the new monopolist protected by law and gains tax dollars via government compulsion.

What about minimal government intervention in business? Not all anarchists advocate business arrangements. Those that do are proponents of non-capitalist markets. It’s also important to note that our present neo-liberal system includes plenty of subsidies to corporations. This corporate welfare is something anarchists oppose.

Anarchists also don’t have the same ideas about what should replace government social services. We oppose capitalist arrangements as a viable alternative. Neo-liberals don’t. This is an important difference to note.

A final and very important difference to note is that neo-liberalism is not really so anti-government. Peter Frase noted this in a good Jacobin piece. He said:

Neoliberalism is a state project through and through, and is better understood as a transformation of the state and a shift in its functions, rather than a quantitative reduction in its size. In his Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey underlines the importance of the state in forcibly creating a “good business climate” by breaking down barriers to capital accumulation and repressing dissent.

O “grupo comercial” supracitado, a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (Associação da Indústria de Títulos e de Mercados Financeiros), já contratou o ex-diretor da National Security Agency (NSA) Keith Alexander e uma firma capitaneada pelo ex-chefe do Departamento de Segurança Interna dos EUA Michael Chertoff para “facilitar” o projeto.

A turma está toda aqui! O governo, ex-funcionários do governo, banqueiros… espere, falta alguém. Quem poderia ser? Ah, sim! Você! Mas não se preocupe, vocë tem um papel a desempenhar aqui. Para começar, você pode pagar a conta.

Quando Alexander descobriu que seus serviços de sergurança (vendidos por sua firma de “consultoria” IronNet Cybersecurity) não vendiam muito a US$ 1 milhão por mês, ele tirou da cartola a velha fraude das “parcerias público-privadas”: arranjar clientes que não estão dispostos a pagar e colocar o estado na jogada para enfiar a conta goela abaixo nos pagadores de impostos.

Mesmo as “parcerias público-privadas” melhorzinhas são péssimas ideias. Suas partes “públicas” são relacionadas ao pagamento de custos (você). A parte privada” tem a ver com a alocação dos benefícios (eles). O estado e seus parceiros “privados” dividem a culpa pelo fracasso — sem comparilhá-la, mas passando de um para outro até que todo mundo esqueça o que aconteceu e possa voltar a bater sua carteira.

É claro, “público” e “privado” não significam aquilo que parecem. O lado “privado” são pessoas como Alexander, Chertoff e seus colegas banqueiros sem rosto — que não estão mais (ou ainda não foram colocados) na folha de pagamentos do governo, mas que estão com seus dentes firmes no erário. O lado “público” são burocratas governamentais salivando por futuros profissionais parecidos. Uma porta giratória conecta os dois lados. Se é difícil percebê-la, é porque ela gira muito rápido. Você paga o frete, mas não tem mais nenhum utro envolvimento.

Esta parceria, porém, não é das melhores. Como é que eu sei? Fácil: ela tem “guerra” no título.

Guerras têm lados. Guerras têm inimigos.

Não acredita em mim? Pergunte a Bounkham Phonesavanh, o bebê que está de volta em casa após internação no hospital depois de ser atingido dentro de seu berçário por uma granada de flash jogada por policiais guerra (“pública”) às drogas. Você pode já ter visto esta história no noticiário no meio de anúncios que dão apoio a um país “sem drogas”. Esse é o seu cérebro na guerra contra as drogas.

O objetivo dessa guerra “público-privada” é consertar a cerca que foi levantada há muito tempo (pelos mesmos indivíduos que agora a defendem) em volta dos bancos e serviços de pagamento e financiamento.

O inimigo é o mercado desregulado e seus clientes (inclusive você). Pense no Bitcoin. Pense nos serviços de carona compartilhada como o Uber e o Lyft.

Esses mercados operam — às vezes na prática, às vezes potencialmente — fora da teia de regulamentações do estado, que são estabelecidas para monopolizá-los e entregar seu controle aos bem conectados. São mercados que sempre existiram (na forma de escambo, moedas locais, vans e caronas compartilhadas), mas hoje em dia crescem em ritmo frenético. Com a ajuda da internet e de fortes tecnologias criptográficas, representam os maiores riscos não só aos monopolistas mas ao sistema de controle estatal que garante seus monopólios.

A campanha de propaganda que eventualmente culminará em “padrões de segurança” e “ações prévias e posteriores” já está em andamento. Provavelmente não se trata de coincidência o fato de que a cobertura da mídia dessa proposta se segue à cobertura de um texto de um blog com supostas conexões à ISIS sobre o uso de Bitcoin para “permitir uma jihad em larga escala”. De fato, eu não me surpreenderia se soubesse que os autores do tal texto e do release do “conselho de guerra cibernetica” tivessem dividido um cubículo no Pentágono — ou pelo menos que tivessem os contatos uns dos outros na discagem rápida.

A má notícia é que provavelmente não há nada que você possa fazer para parar esse “conselho de guerra” e seu planejamento de combate.

A boa notícia é que você pode ganhar essa guerra. Tudo o que você tem que fazer é perceber que precisa de mercados novos, melhores e desregulados mais do que precisa de mercados controlados pelo estado — ou mais do que precisa do próprio estado.

Traduzido para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

He writes in reference to my defining of capitalism:

Pretty good, but.. to my mind, private property is a danger in itself because it creates disparities in economic power that could provide opportunities to demand rent, creating a feedback loop between power and wealth and power, allowing the private property owner to recreate capitalist-like structures.

Legitimate points, Jiminykrix. A way of approaching this particular analysis is to invoke the tried and true left-anarchist distinction between possession and property. If my memory serves me correctly, this demarcation pertains to what one personally uses as opposed to what one owns absentee under capitalist norms of legal ownership. A reliance on possession in the form of occupation and use would go a long ways towards remedying the problems raised by the commentator above.

Without absentee control or ownership, a massive disparity in wealth and power wouldn’t exist because they couldn’t exercise external control over you and extract rent. It was perhaps careless of me not to use the term, private possession, as opposed to private property. Lockean property rights wouldn’t of necessity lead to the conditions described above either. If there were widespread ownership due to more egalitarian freed market forces, the recreation of capitalist structures would be difficult to impossible. The difficulty would leave only a small minority of ardent seekers to push for it. Not exactly a powerful political, economic, and cultural force.

His final commentary relevant to this post is below:

It could be that the understanding of “ownership” in play in this definition is intended to be sufficiently strong to ward off this possibility, but I think it’s worth bearing in mind that legal ownership of something isn’t the only way someone ever extracts rent from someone else.

E.g., in politics under bourgeois democracy, if my fortune allows me to merely *threaten* to fund the opponent of a political candidate, I have power over politics even without spending money. It seems unlikely to me that someone with a hoard of gold (or bitcoin?) in, say, a mutualist society wouldn’t be able to extract rent from someone, somewhere.

The definition used was not intended to be strong enough to ward off this possibility, but it certainly is worth understanding in that manner. Not sure how a person extracts rent from someone else without legal ownership of something, so the commentator is kindly asked to provide further examples or explain the one given beter. The example provided is not understandable as one to me.

The author is correct to note that hoarding wealth in a mutualist society most likely wouldn’t allow one to extract rent. This is possibly due to the lack of absentee control over others, and what they actually use, but you happen to legally own under capitalism. Let’s work to put an end to said exploitation.

This theory is called left-wing market anarchism or laissez faire socialism. Its basic contention is that a truly freed market has never existed, and that capitalism is a statist system. There is also the conviction that genuinely freed markets would result in greater relative equality and more worker friendly conditions. The first thing to cover are the four big monopolies identified by the late individualist anarchist, Benjamin Tucker. They are described in his famous essay, State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, And Wherein They Differ. They are the money monopoly, land monopoly, tariff monopoly, and the patent monopoly or intellectual property monopolies. Let us consider each in turn.

1) The money monopoly pertains to a government or state grant of privilege to select individuals or people possessing certain types of property. This privilege is the exclusive right to issue money. The effect of this is to keep interest rates artificially high or maintain them period. In a left-libertarian market anarchist society, anyone would be free to issue a currency. There would be a competitive whittling down of lending money to the labor cost of conducting banking business. Another positive effect identified by Tucker would be the absence of control mentioned below:

It is claimed that the holders of this privilege control the rate of interest, the rate of rent of houses and buildings, and the prices of goods,—the first directly, and the second and third indirectly.

Kevin Carson has quoted Alexander Cairncross to the effect that:

the American worker has at his disposal a larger stock of capital at home than in the factory where he is employed….

Said capital or property would serve as collateral or backing. This would increase the bargaining power of labor in relation to capital, because the laborers would be able to organize their own credit systems for conducting independent business apart from the capitalists. As Gary Elkin notes:

It’s important to note that because of Tucker’s proposal to increase the bargaining power of workers through access to mutual credit, his so-called Individualist anarchism is not only compatible with workers’ control but would in fact promote it. For if access to mutual credit were to increase the bargaining power of workers to the extent that Tucker claimed it would, they would then be able to (1) demand and get workplace democracy, and (2) pool their credit buy and own companies collectively.

2) The land monopoly consists of governments or states granting or protecting land titles not based on occupation and use. This is a critique of absentee landlordism and the rent following therefrom. This has the effect of shutting out land based work as a competitive factor with industry. It also destroyed the independence to be derived from occupying land or making use of a stateless commons.

3) The tariff monopoly pertains to the protection of the profits of domestic capitalist industry from foreign competition. This increases the price of goods and thus extracts more of the product of laborers from them. It also helps create oligopolies or monopolies, because there is no competitive whittling down of profit or size. It’s worth noting that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon thought the money monopoly had to be abolished before the tariff monopoly, because the people put out of work by foreign competition would need a market with a vast demand for labor to find different work.

4) The patent or intellectual property monopoly allows people to extract monopoly prices from things that could conceivably be competed over. A person is also denied the ability to use their property in a way they see fit through aggressive force. Two people can write the same book without stealing from each other. Patents are also pooled by corporations to prevent any competition and to control economic resources. This allows them to lock the third world into a dependence on them for technology. In addition to the above, Kevin Carson has noted:

A survey of U.S. firms found that 86% of inventions would have been developed without patents. In the case of automobiles, office equipment, rubber products, and textiles, the figure was 100%.

The one exception was drugs, in which 60% supposedly would not have been invented. I suspect disingenuousness on the part of the respondants, however. For one thing, drug companies get an unusually high portion of their R & D funding from the government, and many of their most lucrative products were developed entirely at government expense. And Scherer himself cited evidence to the contrary. The reputation advantage for being the first into a market is considerable. For example in the late 1970s, the structure of the industry and pricing behavior was found to be very similar between drugs with and those without patents. Being the first mover with a non-patented drug allowed a company to maintain a 30% market share and to charge premium prices.

In my next post, I will continue this introduction.

Stay tuned!