“Power is not to be conquered, it is to be destroyed. It is tyrannical by nature, whether exercised by a king, a dictator or an elected president. The only difference with the parliamentarian ‘democracy’ is that the modern slave has the illusion of choosing the master he will obey. The vote has made him an accomplice to the tyranny that oppresses him. He is not a slave because masters exist; masters exist because he elects to remain a slave.” – Jean-François Brient

The state is that entity which claims a legitimate monopoly on the use of violence in a given territory, according to Max Weber. The Hobbesian, Rousseauvian, Lockean perspectives are that the state arose from a world of chaos via a social contract that happens to empower a ruling class (for the good of the people, of course).

The funny thing is, nobody can point to the precise moment when the state arose. Perhaps it was a place like Çatalhöyük (ca. 7500 BC) or Sumer (ca. 2900 BC)—where a stratified society was structured on the basis of might and religious doctrine. The earliest monarchies, empires, and republics—they derive power from violence and the legitimacy of the erroneous inevitable.  Inalienable rights were unheard of – if you blasphemed God (or one of his temporal bureaucrats in the Vatican) within the Holy Roman Empire, you could be excommunicated and any schmuck could kill you without reprisal. Government is rule by some men [sic] over others, nothing more. So is ours—which, let the record show, was built out of slave labor justified by a profound sense of faith in the arbiters of White moral supremacy. In some sense, it still is.

One feature unique to states is taxation, or the forcible extraction of property to be used in a way that the victim would not use themselves. When other groups take your property (or money, which equals time plus energy), it is called theft. Social goods like roads, schools and medical care can be and are best provided by the market. The state has little incentive to provide a quality product because it has no competitors. Capital intensive projects are not better handled by the state due to diffusion of responsibility and bureaucratic opacity. Taxation is extortion at gunpoint, a vestige of tribute paid by a subservient group to conquering armies, according to David Graeber, in his 2011 treatise Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

The only way we justify taxation is to claw back the monopoly profits “earned” (stolen) by the class that has taken control of the machinery of the state (capitalists). But redistribution does not address the root of the problem: state-secured privilege conferred to the politically connected capital class. Capitalism is not to be conflated with free markets, which have existed in various forms (including really free exhange, like Marcel Mauss’ gift economies) throughout human history.

Although controversial, the present scheme, state-capitalism, has only been around since the Early Modern Period. To paraphrase Gary Chartier in Markets Not Capitalism, this system is a symbiosis between big business and government, where the workplace is ruled by an individual called a boss. It is not inevitable that we should live in a system where there are more empty houses than homeless people, or that there can be such a thing as a permanently impoverished working class.

Voters place their hope in God-Kings called Presidents, expecting them to lift them out of servitude. The funny thing is, the rulers are drawn from the same elite class that holds essentially the same ideology as the prior masters. There are exceptions – Presidents who grew up poor, but they became wealthy prior to their inauguration and executed policies that favor the elite. One cannot become president without selling out to corporate interests because of campaign financing. Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

What about the poor?

Saying nothing of colonialism and imperialism—strictly the purview of states, policies that originated much of the world’s destitution—capitalism requires poverty to function. Someone must do the dirty work, staff the military, and subjugate themselves to others in exchange for depressed wages.

The welfare / social safety net cash doled out to the poor covers only bare necessities; the Marxian opium das volkes, a mere placation of radical revolution that would threaten state-conferred capitalist privilege (Marx was an astute critic but a dreadful problem solver – state violence can’t be remedied by augmenting state power). Supporting the welfare state is rational on realpolitik grounds, but not as an endgame.  However, the deeper question is this: why are there so many working poor, when an entire class of people need not work at all yet find themselves stubbornly wealthy?

Jesus did not originate the welfare state in an act of benevolence. Rulers employed payouts to bribe the population under a structural-functionalist logic: to keep the system alive and buy their allegiance. In the 1870s, Otto von Bismarck crippled the German Socialist movement by offering a palliative concession, saying  ”my idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare.” To this day, oppressed people believe the state is looking out for them. The reality is that the state breaks the legs of the poor and hands out taxpayer-funded crutches.

The state is that entity which claims a legitimate monopoly on the use of violence in a given territory. (Philippe Leroyer/Flickr)

State Violence

State violence is proffered as a solution to the consequences of past state intervention, like these:

1. Creation of a legal entity called the limited-liability corporation, which absolves capitalists of crimes and protects their personal wealth from judicial penalty. The state recently decided to give these legal “persons” speech rights. Corporations are immortal, and enjoy considerable tax advantages. The wealthy pay a pittance in capital gains tax, the commoners pay the heftier income tax. Corporations were originally chartered to build bridges and public works and then disband; modern corporations live on – insatiably seeking greater profits regardless of social consequence – the “fiduciary responsibility.” This un-empathetic behavior characterizes psychopathy.

2. States subsidize politically connected businesses like Wal-Mart, Monsanto, Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, Goldman Sachs and Exxon. These companies externalize their diseconomies of scale onto the taxpayers, including disproportionate use of roadways, government research, and monopolistic patents (which deprive people of access to vital generic forms of drugs, for example).

3. Weakening and co-opting labor unions, actively suppressing worker-owned modes of production (workers’ cooperatives). In the previous elections both Romney and Obama favored corporate plunder despite extensive evidence that worker-owned enterprises are far more efficient (no policing costs and workers have an incentive to increase revenue when they share in the profits).

4. Fake regulatory agencies like the FDA, EPA, USDA and SEC which protect corruption under the guise of consumer / taxpayer protection. They are foxes guarding the henhouse, made up of the same individuals that worked in the supposedly regulated industry just prior.  Phenomena known as “regulatory capture” and the “revolving door.”

5. And lets not forget: imperialism, conscription and mass murder. The CIA, the military-industrial complex, the FBI, NSA, Homeland Security, TSA, and the DEA. In sum, the modern welfare-warfare state that knows best for you.

6. Enforcing a monopoly on the issuance of a fiat currency, the value of which derives from government’s future ability to tax. This money is devalued by printing more, which transfers purchasing power from those who get the new money last to those that receive it before circulating (The Cantillon Effect). In this case, Federal Reserve member banks are the beneficiaries. This is an invisible tax.

Illusion of Choice and the Presidential Elections

The epic electoral battle staged every four years is meant to juxtapose two presidential candidates as polar opposites, like Zeus and Hades. But lest we forget, they were brothers. As rhetorical wars are fought and bought with corporate money, the truly substantive issues are never brought up because both teams have a vested interest in the statist quo.

Neither candidate exhibited reservations about a century of ongoing American imperialism, with 700 military bases spanning the globe, or that this country spends more than the next 19 largest spenders combined on the military-industrial-congressional complex. Instead, they bickered over social issues like an individual’s right to marry whomever they want. In an anarchist system, marriage exists outside of the state; couples don’t need state approval to declare their union legitimate.

The corporation-state is the dominant institution of modernity. The logic of state necessity and inevitability rests upon many uninvestigated premises. These assumptions must be interrogated; otherwise court-intellectuals and demagogue-pundits distract us by dramatically rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic. As Noam Chomsky wrote, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

The media always drum up the race as the most important election in history. Those that actually study the history of politics realize that platforms have been blending and triangulating—moving unceasingly in the direction of statism. Left and right may polarize, but they share essential authoritarian characteristics. For example, both candidates favored the National Defense Authorization Act – which strips Americans of their right to a trial before jury and allows for indefinite detainment. Furthermore, both parties are beholden to the dictates of the financial sector, empowered and cartelized by the Federal Reserve.

During the election, both Romney and Obama differed on a slim few substantive issues, and one candidate may be marginally better than the other. However, being forced to choose between these two candidates is like deciding to poison the well with either cyanide or arsenic; innocent people die either way.

Obama is a militaristic president. For example, Obama authorized the drone killing of Anwar al-Aulaqi (a United States citizen living in Yemen) in September 2011. The CIA killed his 16 year old son two weeks later. There was no due process – the President unilaterally assassinated a US citizen on foreign soil.

If any individual killed another person, it would be a heinous crime. When a state kills someone, it’s for the greater good and often remains secret for supposed “reasons of national security.”

Any military age male (18-35) is considered a militant by the U.S. army unless proven otherwise. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, from 2004 to 2012, between 2,562 and 3,325 people were killed in drone strikes in Pakistan alone. The U.S. also operates drones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia.  Some 474 to 881 of those killed in Pakistan were civilians, including 176 children. Another 1,300 were wounded. These numbers are likely to be low, because the U.S. and Pakistani governments seek to obfuscate the severity of the carnage.

Why should we give more power to the guys with the guns and expect that to solve our problems? We need human-scale solutions. We must dig to the root of the issue, which is state-capitalism itself; or the economic system where state power protects illegitimate ownership claims and creates artificial scarcity to protect profits. The state is what makes capitalism (but not markets) possible.

The state and the capitalist class are not antagonistic forces, and America is nowhere near a “free market.” Big business hates authentically free markets – capitalists prefer mercantilism. Unless you are member of the ruling class, you should do everything you can to bring about a less violent, non-statist paradigm—because states have a nasty tendency to start putting certain people in camps and you never know who will be next.

O Centro por uma Sociedade sem Estado (C4SS) é instituição anarquista de pesquisa interdisciplinar e centro de mídia. Sua missão é explicar e defender a ideia de vibrante cooperação social sem agressão, opressão, ou autoridade centralizada. Em particular, busca aumentar o entendimento  e transformar as percepções do público a respeito do anarquismo, ao mesmo tempo  redelineando o debate acadêmico e de movimento, por meio da produção e distribuição de conteúdo de mídia anarquista de mercado, tanto acadêmica quanto popular, da organização de eventos, e do desenvolvimento de redes e comunidades, e de servir, juntamente com a Aliança da Esquerda Libertária e o Instituto Molinari, como lar institucional de anarquistas de mercado libertários de esquerda.

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Política Editorial

Guia do Autor

O Centro por uma Sociedade sem Estado

Diretor
James Tuttle

Coordenador de Mídia
Thomas L. Knapp

Coordenador de mídia em espanhol
Carlos Clemente

Coordenador de mídia em holandês
Christiaan Elderhorst

Coordenador de mídia audiovisual
Nick Ford

Coordenador de tecnologia
Mike Gogulski

Membros sêniores
Brad Spangler
Charles Johnson
Darian Worden
David S. D’Amato
Gary Chartier
James Tuttle
Joseph R. Stromberg
Kevin Carson, Cátedra Karl Hess de Teoria Social
Roderick T. Long
Sheldon Richman, presidente – Curadores do C4SS
Thomas Knapp

Membros
Abby Martin
Carlos Clemente
Anna O. Morgenstern
Anthony Gregory
Chris Bennett
Chris Lempa
Jason Lee Byas
Jeremy Weiland
Julia Riber Pitt
Keith Taylor
Less Antman
Dawie Coetzee
Mariana Evica
Mike Gogulski
Nathan Goodman
Ross Kenyon
Stephanie Murphy
Tennyson McCalla
Trevor Hultner
William Gillis

Conselheiros
Joseph R. Stromberg

Tradutores
Carlos Clemente, espanhol
Alberto Jaura, espanhol
Christiaan Elderhorst, holandês
Jakob Pettersson, sueco
Jaquín Padilla Rivero, espanhol
Luigi Corvaglia, italiano
Luis Panclasta, espanhol
Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme, português
Tau Demetrious, russo
Tomás Braña, espanhol

While we are agreed that the prevalent system of State capitalism depends on the maintenance of artificial scarcity, there seems to be some lack of clarity about the ways in which this is achieved. Specifically there are questions over whether the result of artificial scarcity is an increase or a decrease in industrial output. It would seem obvious, absent other factors, that the way to create scarcity is to withhold output. In many cases this is however not so: the creation of scarcity depends on a significant increase in output.

The variable factors are the choice of technique and the role of the State in maintaining conditions under which certain technical options are viable. The techniques of mass production are both model-specific and capital-intensive, and therefore offer an advantage over artisanal or other techniques only when the rate of output is sufficient to cover the costs involved. That is, if the saving on unit cost multiplied by the number of units produced within a given time exceeds the costs specific to the technique: the so-called economies of scale.

The problem for industry arises when there is insufficient demand to warrant the techniques of mass production. The options then are either to fall back on artisanal techniques or somehow to create the necessary demand artificially. With the former the way to create artificial scarcity would be to ensure that one’s output is always less than demand, the viability of which would be severely limited by competition, absent State intervention. But given the opportunity to suppress competition the amount of artificial scarcity that may be generated is still limited by the demand that exists.

With the latter option, artificial scarcity is created by cultivating structures of need in order to ensure that demand is greater even than may be satisfied by the vast outputs at which the techniques of mass production are advantageous. This is not easily achieved without State intervention. Once established, however, structures of need may be built up over time to a scale wholly disproportionate to the original demand. The amount of artificial scarcity that may be generated thus is almost limitless.

It is obvious, then, that given the opportunity, capitalist industry will be more inclined to create scarcity by artificially multiplying and remultiplying demand than by withholding output.

It is important to understand that the very existence of certain techniques in certain industries presupposes some means of effecting the requisite levels of remultiplied demand, improbable except though the coercive monopoly of the State. It is erroneous to believe that such demand would persist in the absence of the coercive monopoly of the State except in the very short term.

Though there have been historical instances of direct conscious collusion (one thinks of the Great American Streetcar Scandal of c.1936-on) the usual way in which these conditions are created is by means of a future vision, which the State is eager to equip with the requisite hardware and infrastructure, not to mention legislative framework. In this the idea of spontaneous, linear technological progress and its underlying world-view play a large part. Thus the future vision may be presented as inevitable as well as exciting; “This is how we will live in the world of tomorrow!” And hence the task of creating the practical system which brings about the structure of contingent (i.e. indirect) needs, never quite consciously understood as a programme to create artificial economic demand, becomes an ostensibly noble labour of public service. And being established, the vision as built generates the desired plausible projections of future demand, and thus the necessity of adding more and more is not questioned.

Thus the manufacture of demand becomes a normal part of industry, and thus universalized the greater the concentration of industrial power, the greater the output, though this is ever insufficient to meet our needs.

Herein lies the core of a libertarian ecology: industry really does produce too much stuff, but not because consumers have insatiable appetites for stuff. It is not justified to chastise people for wanting a little when they have been made to need a lot. Their wildest desires are probably mostly rather modest compared with the structures of artificial need to which they are subjected. If we could eliminate the vastly greater part of our necessary consumption there would be ample world left over for all the unnecessary consumption we could imagine. This is quite contrary to what we are told, that only the longest-faced austerity can save us.

Expressed differently, we are making far too much for the amount of fun we are having doing so. The amount of creativity that is happening is spread over too great a volume of production. To make is a privilege, when making anything requires making several million more of the same, lest my and your efforts collapse the requisite demand. It should not be this way.

A few days ago, I heard Greg Gutfeld — a self-styled libertarian and host of Fox News’ Red Eye — grieve the “death of private property” in his comment on homeless people squatting in Bank of America-owned houses. As a free marketer, defender of private property, and a libertarian, I’m always offended, or at the very least peeved, at the predisposition of ostensible libertarians like Gutfeld to make common cause with the likes of Bank of America, member of “the brotherhood of thieves who prey upon labor.” Given many self-identified libertarians’ instinctive reactions about private property, the subject is observably susceptible to all of the difficulties that attend hazy definitions and even more confused applications of the definitions we actually have.

And if “private property” is simply — in A.H. Simpson’s words — “defined as the sum of legal privilege,” then Gutfeld is certainly correct in making B of A the paragon of property. As an individualist anarchist, however, I define it as something rather different, as nothing more than one of the ways we ensure the law of equal liberty in practice. Of course I take it for granted that such an explanation doesn’t by itself move the ball forward very much, but it is — even without more — a stark contrast to a mere defense of monopolists. Anarchists ought to take no issue with title to land, with ownership based on cognizable and concrete labors to improve and cultivate it. That kind of “private property,” put into practice as opposed to the system of coercive class rule that we have today, wouldn’t and couldn’t abide a real estate market that puts institutions such as B of A in the driver’s seat.

Developers and mortgage-lending banks sit behind high barriers to entry and enjoy relationships with governments (from the local, to state, to national levels) that ensure their dominance of real property. Further, banks’ monopolization of credit guarantees that the only way most people will ever own real property is through hundreds of thousands of dollars in mortgage loans. All of this, apparently, is the “private property” that Gutfeld supposes we libertarians ought to be defending against the likes of squatters. Well, if this is “private property” and “libertarianism,” then I haven’t much use for either and will busy myself debunking them. I don’t, though, think that we ought to cede the terminology so easily, and neither did libertarians like Benjamin Tucker and A.H. Simpson.

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every subscription or bundle of the “Market Anarchy Zine Series” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS by subscribing to the “Market Anarchy Zine Series“.

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C4SS Media would like to present Voltairine de Cleyre’s Our Present Attitude, read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

“This is the time to stand up boldly and say, ‘Yes, I believe in the displacement of this system of injustice by a just one; I believe in the end of starvation, exposure, and the crimes caused by them; I believe in the human soul regnant over all laws which man has made or will make; I believe there is no peace now, and there never will be peace, so long as man rules over man; I believe in the total disintegration and dissolution of the principle and practice of authority; I am an Anarchist, and if for this you condemn me, I stand ready to receive your condemnation.'” — Voltairine de Cleyre

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Darian Worden.

Apoiar leis de controle de armas de fogo significa dar ao governo mais crédito do que ele merece. O governo é uma instituição administrada e integrada por pessoas com seus próprios interesses e personalidades. São essas pessoas mais perspicazes, mais competentes, ou menos tendentes a intensificar violência do que a pessoa média?

No mínimo, os interesses e incentivos institucionais se conjugam com a dificuldade de responsabilizar os agentes do governo para tornar estes mais perigosos. As leis que eles fazem cumprir tornam-nos ameaça ainda maior à segurança pública. Funcionários do governo com armas de assalto entram nas casas das pessoas se sobre estas recair suspeita de terem a posse de medicamento não aprovado, de não terem pago o banco, ou se acontecer de morarem no endereço errado. Se tais funcionários do governo se sentirem ameaçados durante seu acesso de adrenalina, tenderão a atirar nos aterrorizados residentes e em seus animais de estimação — e a sair impunes. Não me sentiria nada seguro sabendo serem essas as únicas pessoas que podem comprar legalmente pentes de 30 cartuchos.

Dispersar as ferramentas de defesa pessoal entre os indivíduos e comunidades consensuais torna a vida mais segura, ao reduzir o poder dos (e na verdade a necessidade percebida de) protetores oficiais militarizados.

Obviamente, nem todo mundo representa a média, e a violência cometida com armas de fogo por cidadãos privados é algo muito sério. Entretanto, a preponderância da violência é amiúde sintoma de desequilíbrio de poder, usualmente compelido pelo governo.

Disparos em massa ocorrem amiúde, mas não sempre, em instituições de hierarquia rígida, onde um invidíduo tornado impotente pelo sistema vê na violência agressiva meio de obtenção de poder por meio de conquista. Tais motivações podem ser limitadas por meio de posse disseminada de poder baseada no respeito pela autonomia, e pelo cultivo de responsabilidade em vez de obediência.

É verdade, nem todo disparo em massa encaixa-se nesse padrão, e infelizmente é duvidoso que qualquer sociedade consiga impedir inteiramente assassínios. É possível, porém, reduzir o número de vítimas. A melhor maneira de fazer-se isso é por meio de redução da desadaptação institucionalizada e de estímulo para que as pessoas da comunidade assumam responsabilidade pela defesa, em vez de recorrerem às — e esperarem ajuda das — autoridades do governo. Ter armas poderosas com grandes pentes poderá ajudá-las a conseguir isso. Afinal de contas, os departamentos de polícia mencionam cenários de atirador ativo(*) para explicar por que precisam daqueles tipos de armas de fogo enquadradas nas proibições de armas de assalto. (* active shooter – O Departament of Homeland Security [Departamento de Segurança da Pátria/Departamento de Segurança Interior/Departamento do Interior] dos Estados Unidos define como active shooter [atirador ativo] indivíduo ativamente empenhado em matar ou tentar matar pessoas em área confinada e povoada; na maioria dos casos, o atirador ativo usa armas de fogo e não há padrão ou método para escolha de suas vítimas. Ver Wikipedia.)

A maior parte da violência letal cometida por cidadãos privados ocorre em áreas que padecem de discriminação institucionalizada. Segregação econômica não oficial leva certas áreas a terem as piores escolas, as forças policiais mais hostis, os menores níveis de investimento, e o maior ônus de perigos ambientais. São lugares onde grupos raciais minoritários, vitimados pela intolerância dos poderosos, vivem. Os Panteras Negras reconheciam isso; seu programa de andar ostensivamente exibindo armas era parte de seu programa de melhoramento e exercício de poder pela comunidade.

Hoje, a política do governo — levada a efeito pelo monopólio dos que defendem o controle das armas do povo por meio de armas de assalto — torna os bairros em campos de batalha na guerra às drogas, enquanto a política local tenta isolar o problema em distritos escolares específicos. Os jovens são assediados e obscena percentagem de adultos é encarcerada, sufocando o potencial para desenvolvimento aberto e pacífico da comunidade.

Os Panteras Negras originais não eram perfeitos, mas permanecem instrutivos. Certamente ganharam atenção. Rebeldes no sopé de todo desequilíbrio de poder podem provavelmente aprender lições valiosas da experiência deles.

Enquanto tornamos a sociedade mais compassiva — o que não pode ser feito sem o cultivo de respeito pela liberdade e a autonomia — deveríamos respeitar os direitos a armas de fogo de todos os indivíduos responsáveis. É de surpreender que uma pessoa de 18 anos possa votar e servir na instituição militar, mas não possa portar uma arma de mão para defesa própria, especialmente por no passado ter sido comum estudantes rurais trazerem armas para a escola e as deixarem na sala do diretor para poderem caçar antes ou depois das aulas. Se as armas forem vistas como algo conhecido mas perigoso, em vez de fontes misteriosas de poder proibido, provavelmente serão manuseadas mais responsavelmente.

A alternativa a movermo-nos rumo à liberdade é tornar a sociedade mais parecida com uma prisão, com paramilitares fortemente armados montando guarda enquanto aqueles considerados “desajustados” ficam sujeitos a exames de  “saúde mental.” O caminho para maiores responsabilidade, responsabilização e compaixão é encontrado na persecução da liberdade.

Artigo original afixado por Darian Worden em 18 de janeiro de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Ésta es la sexta y última entrada de una serie escrita por Carlos Clemente como asignatura de un curso de introducción al anarquismo en el Centro para una Sociedad sin Estado (C4SS). Para la quinta entrada, hacer click aquí.

***

Cómo y cuándo es permitido usar la violencia es un tema fundamental en el anarquismo, tanto en términos prácticos como filosóficos. El principio de la no agresión es el axioma fundamental sobre el que se construye el paradigma anarquista. Y una de sus más importantes implicaciones es el enfoque anarquista del problema de la revolución.

Contrario a la percepción de la mayor parte del público, los promotores de la revolución violenta dentro del movimiento anarquista han sido una minoría a lo largo de su historia. Y aunque siguiendo una lógica un tanto estrecha pudiese argumentarse que filosóficamente la anarquía justifica la violencia contra el estado como una aplicación directa del principio de no agresión (el estado es, por definición, la institucionalización de la violencia agresiva hacia el pueblo), la gran mayoría de los anarquistas se han opuesto, y se oponen, a los medios violentos para llevar a cabo la revolución.

Los ejemplos más obvios los representan los anarco-pacifistas, entre los que se encuentran figuras del tamaño intelectual de Henry David Thoreau y Leo Tolstoy. Pero a manera de ejemplo, veamos lo que otros anarquistas, no considerados como pacifistas, dicen al respecto:

Las revoluciones sangrientas son con frecuencia necesarias a causa de la estupidez humana. Pero son siempre un mal, un daño monstruoso y un gran desastre, no solo por lo que respecta a las víctimas sino también por la pureza y la perfección del fin en cuyo nombre esas revoluciones se suscitan.

Mijail Bakunin

**

Guerra a la violencia: éste es el móvil esencial del anarquismo. Desgraciadamente, con mucha frecuencia, no existe otro medio de defensa contra la violencia que la violencia. Pero incluso entonces no es violento el que se defiende, sino el que obliga a los otros a tenerse que defender; no es violento el que recurre al arma homicida contra el usurpador armado que atenta a su vida, a su libertad, a su pan. El asesino es el que pone a otros en la terrible necesidad de matar o morir. Es el derecho a la defensa, que se convierte en sacrificio, en sublime holocausto al principio de solidaridad humana, cuando el hombre no se defiende a sí mismo sino que defiende a los otros en su propio perjuicio, afrontando serenamente la esclavitud, la tortura, la muerte.

Errico Malatesta

**

El desorden civil conlleva al fortalecimiento del gobierno, no a su debilitamiento. Puede que tumbe a un gobierno, pero crea una situación en la que la gente desea la instauración de uno nuevo, y más fuerte. El régimen hitleriano nació del caos de los años del Weimar. El comunismo ruso es un segundo ejemplo, una lección por la que los anarquistas del Kronstadt pagaron un alto precio. Napoleón es un tercer ejemplo.

David D. Friedman

**

La revolución violenta no solo es destructiva, de hecho fortalece al gobierno dándole un “enemigo común” en contra del cual unir a la gente. La violencia de una minoría en contra del gobierno siempre le da a los políticos una excusa para aumentar las medidas represivas en nombre de “proteger a la gente”. De hecho, el pueblo por lo general se une a los políticos que claman por “la ley y el orden”… la revolución es una manera muy cuestionable de llegar a una sociedad sin regentes, porque una revolución exitosa debe tener líderes. Para ser exitosa, la acción revolucionaria tiene que ser coordinada. Para ser coordinada, alguien debe estar siempre a cargo de ella. Y una vez que triunfa la revolución “El que Está a Cargo” (o uno de sus lugartenientes, o incluso uno de sus enemigos) se adueña de la nueva estructura de poder tan convenientemente construída por la revolución. Puede que él solo quiera “encaminar las cosas”, pero termina siendo otro regente más. Algo así fue lo que pasó en la revolución americana, y miren la situación en la que estamos.

Linda y Morris Tannehill

**

Cuando el terrorismo logra destruír un gobierno, simplemente crea un vacío de poder sin cambiar fundamentalmente la mentalidad de nadie acerca de la naturaleza del poder. El resultado predecible es que un nuevo estado, peor que el anterior, aparecerá oportunamente para llenar el vacío.

Bryan Caplan

El enfoque de la revolución anarquista con el que yo personalmente simpatizo es el propuesto por la corriente mutualista del anarquismo, o al menos la versión de ella planteada por Kevin Carson:

El mutualismo no es “reformista”, en el sentido peyorativo que le dan al término los anarquistas más militantes. Tampoco es necesariamente pacifista, a pesar de que muchos mutualistas son pacifistas. La definición de reformismo debería basarse no en los medios que usamos para construír una sociedad nueva o en la velocidad con la que nos movemos hacia ese fin, sino en la naturaleza de nuestra meta final. Una persona que está satisfecha con una versión más amable y gentil de capitalismo o estatismo que todavía sea reconocible como capitalismo de estado, es un reformista. Una persona que busca eliminar el capitalismo de estado y reemplazarlo con algo totalmente nuevo, sin importar qué tan gradualmente ésto se haga, no es un reformista.

La “acción pacífica” significa simplemente no provocar al estado deliberadamente hacia la represión, sino hacer todo lo que sea posible para (en palabras de los Wobblies) “construír la estructura de la nueva sociedad dentro de la cáscara de la vieja” antes de tratar de romper la cáscara. Resistirse al estado no tiene nada de malo si éste trata de reversar, a través de la represión, nuestro progreso en la construcción de las instituciones de la nueva sociedad. Pero la acción revolucionaria debe cumplir con dos requisitos: 1) un fuerte apoyo popular; y 2) no debe llevarse a cabo hasta que llegeumos al punto en el que la construcción pacífica de la nueva sociedad halla alcanzado sus límites dentro de la sociedad existente.

Al momento de escribir esta entrada, una ola de levantamientos populares contra la tiranía estremece al medio oriente, y el caso más sangriento hasta ahora ha sido el de Libia.

Habiéndome imbuído del paradigma anarquista durante estas últimas semanas, no puedo evitar ver el conflicto libio como destinado a fracaso trágico. La sangrienta respuesta de Ghadafi a la insurrección le dio la excusa perfecta a los señores de la guerra occidentales para intervenir en el conflicto. Si los rebeldes logran tumbar a Ghadafi bajo estas circunstancias tendrán, en el mejor de los casos, que responder con la misma efusividad a las demandas de sus benefactores imperiales que a las de su propio pueblo. Y en el peor, el proceso de “transición a la democracia” será manipulado por los poderes benefactores, que implantarán un nuevo tirano amigable a sus intereses. Además, por supuesto, de la gran cantidad de muertes civiles causadas por las “bombas de la libertad” que pasarán a contabilizarse como “daños colaterales”.

Por otro lado, a pesar del obvio desastre estratégico y ético que la revolución violenta puede ocasionar, estoy más seguro que nunca de que la violencia defensiva está perfectamente justificada, y me cuido más que nunca de no descartar cualquier argumento a favor de la violencia sin antes estar seguro de que entiendo si está basado en una postura defensiva.

Me imagino que cualquier persona que se dé cuenta de la violencia inherente en el capitalismo de estado tiene emociones encontradas respecto a estos temas. Por eso es que aunque no comparto su opinión, le presto atención a lo que dice gente como Derrick Jensen acerca de la violencia, y creo que entiendo la idea fundamental de dónde proviene su rabia hacia el sistema. Como mínimo, escuchar a gente como Jensen me confirma la importancia crucial de apoyar y alinear mi vida con el principio de la no violencia. La agresión está destinada a provocar violencia más temprano que tarde, es simple y llanamente inevitable.

Le doy crédito a gente como Jensen por estar al tanto de la verdad básica de que somos criaturas dependientes de un sitema que es inherentemente agresivo hacia el ambiente, y que se sostiene a sí mismo perpetuando la guerra entre nosotros.

Llegados a un punto, cualquiera de nosotros puede encontrarse en la situación de perder a un miembro familiar como consecuencia de los “daños colaterales” del imperio, encontrar el agua potable de nuestras comunidades contaminada por envenamiento industrial, o ser perseguido físicamente por discutir y promover ideas que “deslegitimizan al estado”.

Si ese momento llega, puede que el último recurso que nos quede sea resistir a través de la violencia. Puede que tengamos que matar y estar listos a morir por lo que creemos.

Y paradójicamente, se me ocurre que el darnos cuenta de ese hecho fundamental es una condición necesaria para que podamos decir que estmos verdaderamente vivos.

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Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, my old friend and a top-notch economist, historian, and authority on money and banking, sat down with Nick Gillespie of Reason TV for an illuminating interview on what to expect regarding the federal government’s fiscal bog. In accessible language Hummel explains why the government will have no choice but to repudiate its debt (inflation, taxation, and spending can’t balance the budget) and why repudiation will be a good thing. I highly recommend this video.

Ésta es la quinta entrada de una escrita por Carlos Clemente como asignatura en un curso sobre introducción al anarquismo en el Centro para una Sociedad sin Estado (C4SS). Para la cuarta entrada, hacer click aquí. Para la sexta, aquí.

***

Randolph Bourne, en su épico ensayo titulado “La Guerra es la Salud del Estado”, identifica al impulso gregario (“la tendencia a imitar, a conformarse, a coalescer, que alcanza su clímax cuando la manada se siente amenazada por un atacante”) y el instinto filial (“En el sentimiento hacia el estado a un elemento de puro misticismo filial… el deseo de protección nos regresa al padre y la madre, con quienes asociamos los sentimientos de portección más tempranos”), como dos instintos básicos que el estado explota para mantener su dominio sobre las mentes. Y la guerra es la herrramienta principal con la que el estado exacerba esos instintos.

La preponderancia del consumismo en las sociedades contemporáneas es típicamente asociada con los “mercados libres”, debido al lavado cerebral que las corporaciones llevan a cabo a través de sus campañas publicitarias. Pero el consumismo está enraizado firmemente en el impulso gregario, uno de los dos pilares fundamentales de lo que Bourne llama “la salud del estado”. Y el anarquista de mercado nos diría que ésto no es una coincidencia.

Primero, el anarquista de mercado nos diría que la habilidad que tiene una empresa para lavarle el cerebro a una gran cantidad de consumidores depende del tamaño de los presupuestos publicitarios, que a su vez depende del tamaño de la empresa en sí misma. Y los monstruos corporativos multinacionales de hoy en día simplemente serían económicamente inviables en un sistema de mercado verdaderamente libre; osea, en una economía en donde el estado no promoviese el crecimiento corporativo desmesurado a través de subsidios a la infrastructura de transporte y comunicaciones, patentes, cartelización de costos y leyes de incorporación. Lo mismo podría decirse del tamaño y poder de los conglomerados mediáticos modernos, cuya producción editorial contribuye a transformarnos en ganado conformista tanto como lo hacen sus anunciantes corporativos.

El estado participa en el juego con su propia campaña propagandística, vendiendo su imagen como el gran moderador del consumismo (explotando el instinto filial resaltado por Bourne) a través de sus regulaciones, diseñadas por lobistas corporativos, y aprobadas/ejecutadas por políticos cuyas carreras son tan dependientes de las campañas publicitarias como lo es nuestro apego a las baratijas producidas por las corporaciones que los amparan.

Si la vida diaria en las sociedades modernas de consumo se siente como una lucha por la supervivencia en un ambiente agresivo, en el que la competencia entre empresas, compañeros de trabajo y consumidores narcisistas se parece más a una guerra que a otra cosa, pues es la permeación de la influencia estatal en todas las esferas de nuestras vidas a lo que tenemos que culpar, no a la supuestamente caótica influencia de los libres mercados.

Los sistemas colectivistas, por definición, se basan en la exacerbación del impulso gregario, por lo que engendran patrones frenéticos y despilfarradores de búsqueda de status.

En occidente, el colectivismo alimenta al consumismo robótico y la competencia destructiva por alcanzar posiciones y conexiones de privilegio político. En los sistemas reminiscentes del régimen soviético que aún sobreviven en el mundo se da el mismo proceso, aunque con menos consumismo y más competencia política.

Lo cual no significa que la obsesión de Kim Jong-il con las películas de Hollywood, o la moda de las corbatas Louis Vuitton entre los ministros chavistas, nos permitan acusarlos de inconsistentes.

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For too long libertarians have treated market anarchism almost the way Scientologists treat Xenu, as an “esoteric doctrine” to which one is introduced only after one has thoroughly assimilated some more moderate form of libertarianism — as though anarchism were an impediment rather than an asset in making the case for liberty.

Of course this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: potential converts find anarchism off-putting because they don’t know what it is, and they don’t know what it is because we avoid explaining it. In fact market anarchism can and should be one of libertarianism’s greatest selling-points, highlighting a radical and inspiring alternative to the present system rather than some variant of economic conservatism. It’s time to put market anarchism front and center in our educational efforts, time to start making it a familiar and recognizable position — while at the same time continuing to educate ourselves and exploring new horizons in market anarchist thought.

The Industrial Radical does not impose a party line; we welcome discussion and vigorous debate from all quarters, and in particular from other anarchists and radical libertarians from the left and from the right.

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The following article is translated into Dutch from the English original, written by Kevin Carson.

Vanaf het allereerste begin is de regulering van wapenbezit – de poging om het burgerlijk bezit van middelen ter zelfverdediging te reguleren – nauw verbonden met de klassenheerschappij en de overheid die de bevoorrechte klassen dient.

In het begin van het moderne Engeland was de regulering van vuurwapenbezit verweven met de strijd waarin aristocratische grootgrondbezitters en landbouwkapitalisten de werkende klasse de toegang tot onafhankelijk levensonderhoud probeerde te beperken. Onder anderen werden de gemeenschappelijke bossen omheind – waarin landloze en land-arme boeren eerder konden jagen op klein wild – om hier schapenweides of akkerland van te maken. Het omvatte ook het beperken van het jagen door de gewone bevolking door middel van de Game Laws. Hierdoor werd jagen een aristocratische aangelegenheid.

Tijdens de slaaf-ocratie in het zuiden van de Verenigde Staten werd vuurwapenbezit gereguleerd door de zogenaamde Black Codes. Deze reguleerden de vrije afro-Amerikaanse gemeenschap. Zelfs na de afschaffing van de slavernij wisten de voormalige plantagehouders hun gezag te gebruiken tegen het Reconstructie-regime en werden voormalige slaven ontwapend door huis-aan-huis patrouilles, hetzij onder de wettelijke Black Codes of door ongeregelde bewegingen als de Klu Klux Klan.

Het zelfde gold voor de Civil Rights strijd een eeuw later, na de Tweede Wereldoorlog. In gebieden waar gewapende zelfverdedigingsacties door burgerrechtenactivisten op grote schaal werden ondernomen, werd de macht van de Klan en andere militante racistische bewegingen steeds kleiner. Tal van gewapende zelfverdedigingsgroeperingen hielpen de machtsverhoudingen tussen burgerrechtactivisten en racisten gelijk te trekken in vele kleine steden in het zuiden van de VS. Bijvoorbeeld the Deacons of Self Defense and Justice, waarvan de leden gebruik maakten van shotguns om aanvallen van blanke extremisten af te weren in Louisiana in de jaren zestig.

Opvallend was Robert Williams die in 1957 een gewapende verdediging van het huis van de NAACP voorzitter in North Carolina organiseerde tegen een inval van de Ku Klux Klan. De racistische militanten vluchtten voor hun leven. Williams schreef het boek, “Negroes with guns”, wat later een inspiratie was voor Huey Newton, één van de oprichters van de Black Panthers Party.

Geen discussie over het moderne Amerikaanse wapenbezit zou compleet zijn zonder de erkenning van de rol die de Black Panthers gespeeld hebben als inspiratie voor het moderne rechtse wapenreguleringsbeleid.

Voorafgaand aan moderne organisaties zoals Copwatch en Cop Block organiseerden de Panthers gewapende patrouilles in de straten van Oakland om interacties tussen de politie en lokale bewoners in de gaten te houden, de bevolking informatie te geven en juridische bijstand te verlenen indien nodig.

In 1967 reageerde Don Mulford, een Republikeins raadslid in Oakland – en tegenstander van de Berkeley Free Speech Movement en de Black Panthers – met een wetsvoorstel om het dragen van vuurwapens in het openbaar te verbieden. Bobby Seale, van de Black Panthers, protesteerde tegen het wetsvoorstel door het leiden van een Panther detachement – gewapend met .357 Magnums, shotguns en .45-kaliber pistolen – naar het staatshuis van Californië. “Oké, broeders, we gaan naar binnen.” Zij liepen de trap op, de deur door en gingen het openbare deel van het gebouw binnen. Daar las Seale een verklaring voor die het wetsvoorstel neerzette als een poging tot het “ontwapenen en machteloos stellen van de zwarte bevolking terwijl de racistische politie-instanties in het hele land de terreur tegenover de zwarte bevolking intensiveren,” en waarschuwt dat “de tijd is gekomen voor de zwarte bevolking om zich te wapenen tegenover de tirannie voordat het te laat is.”

Het wetsvoorstel van Mulford werd drie maanden later ondertekend door gouverneur Ronald Reagan.

Ongeregelde arbeidsmilities en gewapende verdedigingsgroeperingen speelden een belangrijke rol in de geschiedenis van de vakbewegingen, zowel in de VS en in andere landen. Tijdens de Coal Wars aan het begin van de 20^e eeuw kondigden de gouverneurs van diverse staten in de VS de krijgswet aan. Onder anderen werden de vuurwapens van arbeiders en demonstranten afgenomen. In sommige gevallen, zoals bij de Coal Wars en de Homestead staking in West Virginia, vochten arbeiders tegen Pinkertons, staatsmilitie en vice-sheriffs.

In Spanje was het grotendeels als gevolg van arbeidersmilities, georganiseerd door de CNT vakbond en de linkse partijen dat Franco’s couppoging in 1936 mislukte. In gebieden van Zuid- en Oost-Spanje waar Franco’s troepen het gevecht niet wonnen hebben arbeidersmilities vaak een beslissende rol gespeeld. In sommige gebieden hebben gewapende arbeiders de troepen van Franco doen vluchten naar hun kazernes waarna de kazernes in brand werden gestoken.

Vanaf het begin is de overheid een uitvoerend comité geweest van de economisch heersende klasse en een bron van gewapend geweld voor de eigenaren van productiemiddelen, waardoor zij meer arbeid uit de rest van de bevolking hebben weten te halen. Ik kan me niet voorstellen dat iemand zou verwachten dat de vuurwapenregulering in de VS minder klassenspecifiek zou zijn dan die van andere beleidsterreinen. Ongeacht de ‘democratische’ of ‘progressieve’ retoriek de gebruikt word om de regulering te verdedigen, kan ik veilig stellen dat de gevolgen van de maatregelen de horigen harder zullen raken dan de edelman, de arbeiders harder dan de Pinkertons en de Black Panthers harder dan moordende politieagenten.

Originele artikel geplaatst op 17 Januari 2013 door Kevin Carson.
Vertaald vanuit het Engels door:  Christiaan Elderhorst

“When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking, or thinking, I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.”

– John Adams

SUMMARY:

As government and industry collude, the interests of the powerful trample the rights of the multitude. Technology has granted invasive new eyes and ears to government agencies, spurning the right to privacy. Felicitously, the individual has also been empowered with two new tools to check the corporate state: hacktivism and leaks. The press has been captured by a handful of news corporations that are generally uncritical of government and fail to expose corporate injustice. The techno-libertarian culture has birthed the do-it-yourself fourth estate—usurping the illegitimate media and furnishing a viable alternative to the cartelized press. Two entities, Wikileaks and Anonymous, have emerged under this banner. This inquiry seeks to understand their history, methods, and to ascertain whether use of the discrete figurehead is efficacious.

Introduction

Anonymous

Founded on the ideal of extreme transparency, and abhorrent of censorship, the hacktivist group Anonymous deftly acquires and exposes private but socially-valuable information online.

Anonymous (or the individual Anon) breaks into websites, databases, email and Twitter accounts (or anything with a username and password). The Anon then vandalizes and/or appropriates private information that they feel should be publicly available. The Anons also organize to collectively to deliberatively target and crash websites offensive to the cause of liberty.

Anonymous is a reversal of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon—instead of a prison with a central omniscient tower, each Hacktivist cell scrutinizes the tower itself. The watchers become the watched; corporate governments do not like this.

Anonymous is a leaderless organization, coordinated online over chat rooms and forums. It started on the image forum 4chan, known also as the “bowels of the internet,” for its exceedingly offensive humor (the verb is “to troll.”)

The primary tool of the trade is the Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS), where computer users request large amounts of data from a website simultaneously, overwhelming it and causing it to crash. If caught, DDoS attacks have a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail.

Anonymous has developed a piece of open-source software called the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), which any Anon can download and contribute to the operation without any requisite hacking savvy whatsoever. The name is derived from a weapon proposal from Nikola Tesla, for a “death ray” device that fires ionized particles. [7]

The LOIC allows Anons to volunteer their bandwidth to DDoS without even being at the computer, uniting with others in an automated “bot-net.” This devastating collective weapon explains Anonymous’ ability to incapacitate heavily fortified government websites.

“Anonymous is the first internet-based, anarchic super-consciousness. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they’re a group? Because they’re travelling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, and peel off in another direction entirely.”  – Chris Landers [8]

Inside the Internet Hate Machine

 “Fox News had in 2007 dubbed 4chan the ‘Internet hate machine’—a barb embraced, if ironically, by Anonymous, which responded with a grim parody video claiming to be ‘the face of chaos,’ ‘harbingers of judgment’ those who ‘laugh at the face of tragedy.’” [9]

According to anthropologist, NYU professor and Anonymous liaison Gabriella Coleman, the demographic of Anonymous is rather hard to verify. She embarked on a study of the group in 2008 (when it came onto the international scene) by spending time on 4chan and interviewing them in their Internet Relay Chatrooms (IRC). She found that the group is largely composed of liberal anarchists, vigilante libertarians, geeks, activists, bored teenagers and professional computer scientists with a unifying commitment to freedom of information.

“The group’s organizing principle—anonymity—makes it impossible to tell how many people are involved. Participation is fluid, and Anonymous includes hard-core hackers as well as people who contribute by editing videos, penning manifestos, or publicizing actions. Then there are myriad sympathizers who may not spend hours in chat rooms but will heed commands to join DDoS attacks and repost messages sent by Anonymous Twitter accounts, acting as both mercenary army and street team.” [10]

The group has a strong anti-ego and anti-celebrity ethic, chastising those who speak on behalf of the organization or seek too much time in the spotlight. They use deliberative consensus and polling within their chat-rooms and forums. The size waxes and wanes, but one forum alone has over 30,000 users, and they’re mostly concentrated in North America, Australia and Latin America and Europe.

The hacktivists communicate with the public in their characteristic video style, featuring dramatic oratory often filtered through an anonymizing computer voice over video of “V” from the film “V for Vendetta.” This formulaic call-to-arms has been recycled by many involved in the Occupy movement.

As a rhetorical sample, a partial transcript of the poetic and incisive Anonymous video, “The Bankers Are The Problem”

“The bankers manufacture recessions and depressions to exert a greater control over social and political structures. The bankers create and finance the wars on both sides of the conflict. The bankers control the policies and control the media and the education system that is operated to maintain ignorance in the public, so that they can be shorn like sheep. The bankers launder the drug money, and ensure that drugs remain illegal. The bankers are the problem.”

The Crusade

Anonymous’ first unifying incident began as an attack on the Church of Scientology, in “Project Chanology.” The Guy Fawkes mask that is iconographic of Occupy actually began with this action. (This uniform mask of anonymity is not new—the Guerilla Girls of the 1980s pioneered the technique). [11] Hotly debated at first, Anonymous ultimately decided to manifest in person at Scientology headquarters around the world. The largest demonstration took place on February 10, 2008, involving over 7,000 people in 100 cities. [12]

Along with the Church’s controversial financial practices, this demonstration was precipitated in January 2008, when the organization attempted to remove from the web an insider-only motivational video of Tom Cruise blathering manically. This process of scandalous overreaction has come to be known as the Streisand Effect (after Barbara Streisand attempted to censor internet photos of her lavish estate and unwittingly made it a bigger deal that it would have been otherwise).

Anonymous and Scientology have had strained relations ever since the hacktivist collective was declared a “cyberterrorist group,” that was perpetrating “religious hate crimes” against the Church. Anonymous has resolved to “expel the church from the Internet,” and has called into question the legitimacy of its tax-exempt status. [13] Disturbingly, Germany is considering banning the religion entirely. [14] In an “epic troll” in 2009, a group of Anons executed Operation Slickpubes, in which a streaker slathered in Vaseline and pubic hair terrorized the New York City headquarters of the Church of Scientology.

This animosity toward Scientology is hardly political, almost a form of scapegoating, but it fortified the cohesion within Anonymous and created the capacity to mobilize in the real world.

Fomenting Revolution

Anonymous was instrumental in inciting and supporting the Arab Spring. In the town of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, 190 miles south of Tunis, a twenty-six year old vegetable cart peddler named Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself ablaze.

Bouazizi was responding to an incident of police misconduct, where an officer confiscated his cart, fined him, slapped him and insulted his deceased father. He appealed to the local court but was not given an audience. This acute incident, coupled with structural economic disenfranchisement drove him over the edge. On December 17, 2010, Bouazizi stood outside the provincial headquarters of Sidi Bouzid and unceremoniously immolated himself.

The Internet exploded with #SidiBouzid and anti-Ben Ali rhetoric. [15] The Tunisian government responded by deleting dissenters’ Facebook accounts. This time, another hashtag suffused through Tunisian social media: #Anonymous.

The collective launched #OpTunisia and organized to bring down seven of the Tunisian government’s official websites, including those of the Ministry of Industry and stock exchange.[16] The entity also published a “cyber war survival guide,” sharing information from Wikileaks about Ben Ali’s corruption, and how to outsmart riot police and access proxy cites for Facebook and Twitter.

The Ali government responded with “phishing” operations to steal passwords of dissenters in order to spy on them. This Orwellian tactic backfired, and the tweets kept coming. The Ali regime crumbled when protest reached a critical mass and pressure from the international community mounted. He stepped down on January 14, 2011. Egypt, standing in solidarity with the Tunisians, began a movement of their own (which also involved Anonymous). [17]

Anonymous is extremely active, partially because affinity groups are autonomous and not bogged down in bureaucratic sludge.

The leading Anonymous scholar Gabriella Coleman writes:

“Political operations often come together haphazardly. Often lacking an overarching strategy, Anonymous operates tactically, along the lines proposed by the French Jesuit thinker Michel de Certeau. ‘Because it does not have a place, a tactic depends on time—it is always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized ‘on the wing,’’ he writes in The Practice of Everyday Life (1980). ‘Whatever it wins, it does not keep. It must constantly manipulate events in order to turn them into ‘opportunities.’ The weak must continually turn to their own ends forces alien to them.”

This approach could easily devolve into unfocused operations that dissipate the group’s collective strength. But acting “on the wing” leverages Anonymous’s fluid structure, giving Anons an advantage, however temporary, over traditional institutions—corporations, states, political parties—that function according to unified plans. De Certeau pointedly distinguishes this as strategy, which ‘postulates a place that can be delimited as its own and serve as the base from which relations with an exteriority composed of targets or threats … can be managed.’ Anonymous is not bound to any such place, and therefore does not harbor what de Certeau calls ‘a Cartesian attitude.’”

This superfluidity has proved fertile ground for collective action, including: hacking the Vatican Website (twice), #OpEgypt (where they helped people get back on the internet using the “dark net” and third party proxies), outing members of child porn rings, and BART cell phone retaliation. They also hacked Ayatollah Khameini’s official website, hacked Monsanto in the name of environmental protection and food rights, and they provided hacking tutorials and secure drop boxes during the Syrian revolts where protestors deposited information anonymously.

Anonymous has mirrored peer-to-peer websites like The Pirate Bay, and they regularly unlock software like Norton Antivirus and upload it for free. Anonymous shut down the website of “Americans for Prosperity,” the PAC funded by the infamous Koch Brothers, in support of striking workers in Wisconsin during what they called Operation KochBlock. [18]

Avenge Assange

Beginning on February 2010, Julian Assange came under fire for publishing a trove of 250,000 secret United States diplomatic cables dating back to 1966. On December 2, Bank of America, Amazon, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard and the Swiss bank PostFinance froze Wikileaks’ donation accounts. Wikileaks was crippled.

On December 8, MasterCard and Visa’s websites were taken offline with a coordinated DDoS attack, orchestrated by Anonymous in ‘Operation Avenge Assange.” This began the fruitful relationship between WikiLeaks and Anonymous.

Next came Operation HBGary. Coleman writes:

“In February Aaron Barr, CEO of the HBGary security firm, claimed to have ‘pwned’ Anonymous, discovering the real identities of top operatives. In response, Anons commandeered Barr’s Twitter account and used it to spew 140-character racial slurs while following the accounts of Justin Bieber, Gay Pride, and Hitler. They hacked HBGary servers and downloaded 70,000 emails and deleted files, wiped out Barr’s iPhone and iPad, then published the company’s data alongside Barr’s private communications for good measure.”

Most remarkably, Anonymous unearthed a document entitled ‘The WikiLeaks Threat,’ which outlined how HBGary Federal (a subsidiary dealing with federal contracts) and other security companies might undermine WikiLeaks by submitting fake documents to the site. There was also evidence of plans to ruin the careers of WikiLeaks supporters, among them Salon.com writer Glenn Greenwald.

A small crew of AnonOps hackers had started with retaliatory trolling and had ended up exposing what seemed to be a conspiracy so damning that members of Congress called for an investigative committee to be established. Given that these were private firms, the evidence obtained by AnonOps could never have been procured through legal channels such as a Freedom of Information Act request.” [19]

Anonymous had entered the major league. Since then, governments have persecuted Anonymous, beginning in December 2010 when Dutch police arrested a 16-year old for cyber-attacks against Visa, MasterCard and Paypal. [20] In January 2011, British authorities arrested five males aged between 15 and 26 on suspicion of participating in Anonymous DDOS attacks. [21]

On June 13, 2011, Turkish officials arrested 32 individuals that were allegedly involved in DDoS attacks on Turkish government websites. This attack was in response to a new Turkish mandate on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to implement a system of filters that was seen as censorship. [22]

The two most recent rashes of arrests are also the most egregious. In July 2011, over twenty Anonymous suspects had their homes raided were arrested in a coordinated action by the US, UK, and Netherlands. [23]

On February 28, 2012, Interpol released 25 warrants for the arrest of Anonymous suspects. The suspects, ages 17 to 40, were all arrested. [24] These arrests have had little effect on the collective, though, which temporarily took down the websites of the CIA, Department of Justice, FBI, NASA, and MI6 on April 15 of 2012. [25]

Legal persecution of hacktivists is nuanced and without precedent. Advocates of Anonymous, like attorney Jay Leiderman, argue that DDoS attacks are protected speech, or “digital sit-ins”:

“There’s no such thing as a DDoS attack. A DDoS is a protest, it’s a digital sit-it. It is no different than physically occupying a space. It’s not a crime, it’s speech. Nothing was malicious, there was no malware, no Trojans. This was merely a digital sit-in. It is no different from occupying the Woolworth’s lunch counter in the civil rights era.” [26]

Wikileaks

“In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

-George Orwell

An Australian computer programmer named Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006. The organization publishes insider leaks and original source material, serving as an historical record and journalistic resource.  It has been described as “an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking.” [27] Assange has received numerous civil libertarian and journalistic awards, and was even nominated for the Nobel Peace prize. [28]

WikiLeaks is best known for its Collateral Murder video leak, thanks to U.S. Army private Bradley Manning. The video depicted an Apache helicopter mowing down suspected insurgents, journalists, and two children. One officer was heard saying that the unarmed victim “shouldn’t have brought his kids to a battle.” The footage illustrated how the use of drones and long-range weapons dissociates the solider from the horror of war.

Several of Wikileaks’ more notable disclosures took place in 2010. That year saw the release of 400,000 documents mostly relating to the Iraq War, what the Pentagon called “the largest leak of classified documents in history.”[29] These included a deliberate Bush administration policy of ignoring human rights violations by the Iraqi police, thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths that the Pentagon suppressed, Hilary Clinton’s 2009 authorization of spying activities on United Nations diplomats, and the joint efforts of Obama administration and GOP leaders to kill the investigative probe into Bush administration and C.I.A. torture practices. WikiLeaks also exposed a communiqué from Yemen’s president assuring US officials that Yemen would continue telling its citizens that U.S. military airstrikes were being carried out by Yemen. [30]

On April 25, 2011, the Guantánamo Bay Files were released. These 779 secret documents revealed that over 150 probably innocent Afghans and Pakistanis, including farmers and chefs are being held without charge. The oldest detainee is 98-year-old Mohammed Sadiq, and the youngest is 14-year-old Naqib Ullah. [31]

Also uncovered was a post-waterboard interview with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who allegedly stated that if Osama Bin Laden were to be captured or killed, an al-Qaeda sleeper cell would detonate a weapon of mass destruction in Europe, promising a “nuclear hellstorm.” He had been waterboarded 183 times—in retrospect, perhaps his Intel was corrupted by the lack of oxygen. [32]

On February 27, 2012, Wikileaks released five million emails from Texas-headquartered private intelligence company Stratfor. This was Wikileaks’ first attack on what political scientist Stacy Herbert terms the “DIC: Data Industrial Complex,” the pseudo-private system of global espionage. The leak revealed Stratfor’s close government ties, questionable interview methods (bribery, blackmail, seduction), and over 4,000 emails concerning Julian Assange himself. [33]

As an insurance policy, a 1.4 GB password-protected file has been uploaded to Wikileaks. Assange called it a “thermonuclear weapon.” The decryption password is to be released should Assange be harmed. The Swedish company Banhof hosts Wikileaks’ data in a former nuclear bunker, under the aegis of the country’s liberal free speech laws. Even still, leakers are strongly encouraged to use the Tor, an application popular among Arab Spring journalists, which routes signals such that the user is anonymized.

Storm clouds

“The people don’t want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

 – Hermann Goering

The mainstream media, government officials, and conservative political commentators have denounced Wikileaks as a “cyberterrorist” organization. Some even recommend that Assange and Bradley Manning be tried for treason and executed. [34]

On March 16, 2009, the Australian government placed Wikileaks on a blacklist of websites to be censored (it was later removed from the list in November 2011). [35]

In December 2010, the White House Office of Management and Budget sent a memo forbidding all unauthorized federal government employees and contractors from accessing the classified documents made publicly available on WikiLeaks. [36]

Diane Feinstein incited the Espionage Act in the persecution of Assange, a “threat to national security,” potentially leaking vital information to the “enemy” (there is a problem when the enemy is the “voting” public). Joe Biden assessed that Wikileaks had put American lives in danger. [37] Thomas Friedman declared Wikileaks one of the two major threats to a Pax Americana, next to the ascendant China. [38]

Despite these claims, Wikileaks employs a team that reviews all documents prior to release, redacts sensitive and unnecessary information, and several independent studies have found no harm has been done to military or diplomatic personnel. [39] Law Professor Ben Saul has stated publically that Assange “is the target of a global smear campaign to demonize him as a criminal or as a terrorist, without any legal basis.” [40]

The Supreme Court has ruled to protect the distribution of illegally gained information provided the publishers themselves did not break any laws in acquiring it. [41] This is how Anonymous and Wikileaks operate symbiotically; Anonymous acquires information and Wikileaks publishes it.

Assange’s right-hand man, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, defected on September 28, 2010. He cited lack of transparency, hierarchy and Assange’s domineering attitude as causes for his departure. [42] Several other employees have also resigned for similar reasons. In January of 2011, Icelandic minister Birgitta Jónsdóttir ended her formerly close relationship with the organization. [43] (Note: Wikileaks exposed documents on the Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which were instrumental in the country’s sweeping financial reforms. The country, like Sweden, also has liberal speech laws and has granted asylum to Wikileaks in the past).

Causing the most uproar, but ironically the issue of least importance in terms of Wikileaks’ democratic utility, is the allegation of Assange’s sexual crime(s).

In August 2012, two Swedish women began prosecuting Assange for sexual misconduct. The women were not initially seeking to bring these charges against him, but merely to track Assange down and persuade him to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. The case was dropped the day after the announcement, and shortly thereafter taken up by Swedish Director of Public Prosecutions Marianne Ny. She ordered that Assange be subject to official interrogation. Quotations of the precise allegations can be read in the the endnotes. [44]

The timing is conspicuous, and the charges tenuous. However, whether Assange is guilty or innocent falls outside the scope of this paper. The bottom line: this type of fiasco illustrates the disadvantage of using fallible, discrete figureheads in a subversive organization such as Wikileaks.

Orderly Anarchy

There are certainly merits to leadership. A figurehead, coordinator or spokesperson can direct an enterprise and broadcast a unified message to the public. People associate iconic individuals with movements and ideas—hence symbols like Che Guevara, Marylin Monroe, and Ronald Reagan; these individuals embody a larger message.

A leader can make executive decisions and guide the group in the “right” direction. However, this argument is tenuous. The wisdom of crowds is more democratic than executive rule and better reflects the sentiment of the people, so the more the merrier when dealing with public issues like the liberation of the press.

Leadership also comes at a cost. Leaders can turn on their followers. Opponents easily demonize or blame the leader. Leaders are discrete bodies that can be extradited, thrown in jail, or otherwise neutralized. If the dynamic leader is suddenly incapacitated, the movement risks death. The centralization of power is a Tower of Babel; the more instrumental the vanguard, the greater the risk of internal hemorrhage when something goes wrong. The survivability of any system is increased with safeguards, contingency plans, and divestment of powers.

Anonymous’ guerilla tactic of hacking, data dumping and viral information flow protects the mass when any individual could be singled out as a criminal—like a protest or a riot. Furthermore, Anonymous is less bogged down in bureaucracy, needn’t wait for approval from above, and is consequently more prolific.

The clearest benefit of Anonymous’ lack of explicit, fixed leadership is the decapitation phenomenon; cut off the head of a Hydra and two grow back. The press coverage of Anon arrests rallies more to the cause, whereas Wikileaks was irreparably tarnished after the widespread, derisive smear campaign against Assange (though his associates’ polemic may have been called-for).

Anonymous needn’t worry about that. Under a leaderless system, personality clashes and egotism do not get in the way. To this point, Anonymous heartily took the advice of Samuel Johnson: “He who makes a beast of himself takes away the pain of being a man.”

They have trolled so offensively that it would be challenging for the “Internet Hate Machine” to top itself. But it doesn’t matter anyway. No one person is singularly responsible for the deliberately inflammatory rhetoric—much like how a firing squad of ten men will only have nine bullets—distribution of blame (or often, responsibility and credit).

Dozens of Anons have been arrested (and their solidarity is impressive) yet the movement does not stumble. Wikileaks’ operations have seriously faltered since Assange was put under house arrest in January of 2011 (though he has been given a television show on Russia Today).

This distribution of responsibility is also the strength of other such anarchic movements. According to political analyst and trend forecaster Gerald Celente:

“The very weakness that the people think of the Occupy movement, not having a leader, not having one message, is, in fact, its very strength. For example, take WikiLeaks, big news and doing a lot of important information combing.  But it died because they cut the head of the leader off.”

The prominence of a leader is not binary; there are shades of gray. The Zapatista leader Subcommandante Marcos is an example of this middle ground. His true identity is veiled by a ski mask but he serves in a leadership role. The militant philosopher is a charismatic, witty and poetic character. He is received as a rock star throughout Mexico. Marcos is an ingenious blend between the Guy Fawkes-mask wearing Anons and the very bold-faced Julian Assange; disguised but atomized, individual but collective:

“Marcos, the quintessential anti-leader, insists that his black mask is a mirror, so that ‘Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10 p.m., a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.’ In other words, he is simply us: we are the leader we’ve been looking for.” — Naomi Klein

The insufferable Thomas Friedman wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times comparing Wikileaks to the ascendant Chinese superpower:

“The world system is currently being challenged by two new forces: a rising superpower, called China, and a rising collection of super-empowered individuals, as represented by the WikiLeakers, among others. What globalization, technological integration and the general flattening of the world have done is to super-empower individuals to such a degree that they can actually challenge any hierarchy — from a global bank to a nation state — as individuals.

As for the super-empowered individuals — some are constructive, some are destructive. I read many WikiLeaks and learned some useful things. But their release also raises some troubling questions. I don’t want to live in a country where they throw whistle-blowers in jail. That’s China. But I also don’t want to live in a country where any individual feels entitled to just dump out all the internal communications of a government or a bank in a way that undermines the ability to have private, confidential communications that are vital to the functioning of any society. That’s anarchy.” [45]

His sense of the magnitude of individual empowerment is accurate, but his conclusion is flawed; in the realm of communications, anarchy (absence of a ruler) is what humanity should be striving for. Government confidentiality is not vital to the functioning of society. In fact, secrecy undermines the public good. Too often the term “matter of national security” has merely been code for “cover-up.”

“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society. […] We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers that are cited to justify it. […] And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.” -John F. Kennedy 

But even if secrecy could be justified, these two organizations do little to jeopardize national security—the “enemy” employs the world’s most expert hackers—Wikileaks or Anonymous are nowhere near as sophisticated. [46]

Wikileaks and Anonymous work on behalf of the constituency. Leakers voluntarily give Wikileaks the documents that they feel the world should know about. Anonymous uses a deliberative form of democracy to launch an inquiry, like the Freedom of Information Act, into issues of social relevance.

People have a right to privacy, but the state has no such right to secrecy, especially when its own constituency launches the inquiry. Confidential communications are protected from government by the 4^th Amendment. If the activities of an individual do not warrant widespread social concern, they will not be exposed by Anonymous (for lack of interest). The danger of vital political information going undisclosed far outweighs the potential for citizens to spy on their neighbors.

CONCLUSION

Regardless of whether Anonymous and Wikileaks survive in the face of the opposition, both of these crowd-sourced models have already been reproduced. The cat is out of the bag—Openleaks, Ruleaks (Russia) and Lulzsec are examples of such copycats. The fluid, spontaneous and international participatory political relations of the web are effectively digitizing the public sphere. This anarchistic structure is emblematic of the age, one of disillusionment with disingenuous representatives and figureheads.

 “There is no army that can stop an idea whose time has come.”

– Victor Hugo

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Thomas L. Knapp.

“Esta é nossa primeira tarefa como sociedade,”disse o presidente dos Estados Unidos Barack Obama numa coletiva de imprensa em 16 de janeiro: “Manter nossas crianças em segurança.”

O propósito do evento era transformar os disparos do mês passado na escola de Newtown, Connecticut, em apoio a um elenco de novos decretos-leis e propostas legislativas relacionados com o que seus defensores chamam eufemisticamente de “controle de armas de fogo.”

Em sentido evolutivo e biológico, Obama tem certa razão. A função precípua da sociedade humana É proteger nossos filhos de tal maneira que eles possam tornar-se adultos, reproduzir-se e perpetuar a sociedade.

Por outro lado Obama, em seu papel como presidente, representa a mais poderosa e mais contraproducente instituição humana, isoladamente considerada, relacionada com aquele objetivo: O estado. O açambarcamento de poder que ele acaba de colocar no programa do estado serve apenas aos interesses daquela instituição — não apenas em vez, como também a expensas das crianças que ele está explorando como capital político na persecução daquele programa (e, em particular, como Nathan Goodman, do Centro por uma Sociedade Sem Estado, destaca, as crianças das comunidades minoritárias oprimidas às quais o partido de Obama assevera oferecer proteção).

Os pretensos opositores de Obama dentro do governo não fazem muito melhor. A linha deles,  como expressada pelo Deputado dos Estados Unidos Dave Reichert (D-WA), equivale a uma covarde “as leis que já temos neste país só precisam ser postas em prática.”

Não, não precisam.

“As leis que já temos neste país” obrigam, pela força, o ajuntamento diário de milhões de crianças em convenientes pisos de matança (“escolas públicas”).

“As leis que já temos neste país” proíbem — ou pelo menos regulam onerosamente — a posse das ferrramentas de defesa dessas crianças, de seus pais, e de seus professores.

“As leis que já temos neste país” informam a cada e a todo monstro com capacidade de ler uma tabuleta (“Zona Escolar Livre de Armas”) que essas crianças estão indefesas e à mercê de dito monstro.

Outras espécies ensinam os princípios da sobrevivência — incluindo, mas não limitados, ao uso das armas que elas naturalmente possuem — a seus filhos na mais tenra idade prática. Os seres humanos negam a seus filhos essas armas e até, nesta época e idade, punem ativamente pensamentos ou palavras relacionados com autodefesa.

Outras espécies protegem seus filhos de predadores a todo custo. Os seres humanos mandam seus filhos como se fossem bufês do tipo coma o quanto quiser, à mercê de predadores, e em seguida voltam-se para o mais voraz predador de todos — o governo político, que sistematicamente abocanha percentuais de dois dígitos de nosso sustento para atender a seus próprios propósitos glutões, e ocasionalmente permite-se acessos de raiva assassina e até genocida — em nome da “proteção.”

Não é difícil ver por que os políticos apoiam o “controle de armas de fogo,” o qual é mais exatamente descrito como “desarmamento de vítimas.” Que predador não preferirira que sua presa não tivesse dentes ou garras? No mundo de Barack Obama, eventos como o massacre de Newtown são preço pequeno a pagar pela inconteste capacidade de fazer por atacado o que Adam Lanza fez no varejo.

Difícil de entender é por que temos tolerado esse predador por tanto tempo. Só no século 20, os governos assassinaram mais de 260 milhões de pessoas, e essa é uma estimativa extremamente baixa (seu publicador, Dr. RJ Rummel, da Universidade do Havaí, exclui as mortes associadas com o funcionamento diário das “democracias” de suas estatísticas).

Felizmente as propostas de Obama darão em nada, como outro elenco de estatísticas deveria deixar claro: Pelo menos 70 milhões de estadunidenses possuem mais de 200 milhões de armas de fogo (números também por baixo, selecionados dentre conjuntos competidores que já vi). E a tecnologia para produção doméstica ilimitada de mais ainda está rapidamente tornando-se irrevogável e universalmente disponível. Se os políticos pensam que podem “controlar armas de fogo,” estão equivocados.

Artigo original afixado por Thomas L. Knapp em 16 de janeiro de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Ésta es la cuarta entrada de una serie escrita por Carlos Clemente como asignatura en un curso sobre introducción al anarquismo en el Centro para una Sociedad sin Estado (C4SS). Para la tercera entrada, hacer click aquí. Para la quinta, aquí.

***

En una reciente entrevista, Noam Chomsky, quien quizás sea el anarquista más famoso del mundo, hizo una declaración que le provocaría un ataque de grima a sus primos anarquistas de mercado:

Movámonos a un tipo de sociedad en la que el 15 de abril [fecha en la que vence el plazo para la declaración de la renta personal en los Estados Unidos] sea un día de celebración.

“Lo que nos da grima”, dirían los anarquistas de mercado, al unísono, “es que el señor Chomsky, a pesar de ser lingüista, no ve la contradicción inherente en pedirle a alguien que disfrute de ser forzado a hacer algo. El diccionario dice que los impuestos son contribuciones compulsivas a las arcas del estado, lo que significa que el estado fuerza a la gente a pagarlos. La gente nunca celebrará el pagar impuestos porque a la gente no le gusta que le roben el fruto de su trabajo.”

Pero la contradicción que los anarquistas de mercado ven en la declaración de Chomsky tiene que ver más con Economía que con Lingüística.

A pesar de que su propio trabajo muestra de manera sistemática que el estado ha sido el principal impulsor de la concentración de poder privado a través de la historia, Chomsky es de la opinión de que antes de deshacerse de él, la gente tiene que de alguna manera tomar el control del estado y reformarlo para que de verdad represente sus intereses, y utilizarlo como una barrera de contención contra el poder de la élite corporativa.

Pero para el anarquista de mercado es imposible reformar el estado debido a la naturaleza de su estructura de incentivos, de la cual los impuestos son parte fundamental. Los miembros de cualquier organzación que tenga el poder de usar la fuerza para extraer recursos de la gente cuyos intereses supuestamente representa, tienen un fuerte incentivo para usar esos recursos para promover sus propios intereses, por la sencilla razón de que dicha gente no cuenta con la opción de dejar de contribuír con sus recursos al sostenimiento de la organización. Y la democracia atenúa, más no soluciona el problema, porque el votante promedio sólo puede sacar de sus puestos a los políticos votando en su contra una vez cada varios años; y sólo si convence al 51% del electorado de que voten como él.

La posibilidad de compartir los recursos extraídos a la gente por la fuerza con las corporaciones es lo que da a los políticos la capacidad de ofrecerles lo que equivale a un mercado cautivo a cambio de contribuciones políticas, posibilidades de carrera en el sector privado, y todos los otros favores espúreos que Chomsky ha denunciado tan diligentemente a través de los años.

El argumento en contra de los impuestos promovido por los anarquistas de mercado también contradice frontalmente al que proponen la mayoría de los economistas convencionales, según el cual los impuestos son un mal necesario al que la gente se resigna para solucionar el problema del polizón en la provisión de bienes públicos. Un pilar fundamental del movimiento anarquista de mercado es la enorme cantidad de investigación que han echo a favor de la hipótesis de que el problema del polizón se puede solucionar a través de la acción colectiva voluntaria en lugar de la compulsiva; o de que los problemas para la provisión competitiva de bienes públicos se origina en la intervención del estado en lugar de en las fallas de mercado.

Pero la relación entre los anarquistas de mercado y los impuestos es algo más complicada que el simple pujar por su abolición a cualquier precio y bajo cualquier cirunstancia. Los anarquistas de mercado jamás hubiesen aprobado reducciones impositivas á la George W. Bush y sus neocon-amigotes. De haber tenido que financiar sus aventuras imperialistas y su red de bienestar corporativo con impuestos, la inmediatez del dolor financiero quizás hubiese impulsado al electorado a rebelarse contra el régimen. O al menos hubiese sido más difícil hacerlos creer en embustes sobre armas de destrucción masiva.

O para usar un ejemplo sobre un régimen que supuestamente se encuentra en el extremo ideológico opuesto, los anarquistas de mercado probablemente preferirían que el estado venezolano se financiase mayoritariamente a través de impuestos comunes y corrientes en lugar de los ingresos que obtiene por su monopolio petrolero. Eso quizás le daría a los venezolanos un mayor incentivo para exigir estándares mínimos de transparencia y responsabilidad fiscal al régimen de Hugo Chávez, que actualemente se afinca sobre no uno, sino diez fondos parafiscales para gastar tanto como quiera, en lo que quiera, en favor de quien se le de la gana, sin tener que rendirle cuentas a absolutamente nadie.

Pero si retrocedemos un poco en la historia contemporanea de venezuela nos encontraremos con que más de un anarquista de mercado, a pesar de estar perfectamente conscientes de los graves problemas ocasionados por los subsidios a cualquier forma de transporte, se opondrían con igual vehemencia a la eliminación tipo “terapia de shock” de los controles de precios del combustible implementados por el régimen de Carlos Andrés Pérez hacia finales de los 80 con el respaldo del Fondo Monetario Internacional, lo cual fue la causa fundamental del caracazo y legitimó el intento de golpe de estado perpetrado por Chávez. En palabras de Kevin Carson:

Las prioridades estratégicas de los libertarios con principios deberían ser exactamente las opuestas: eliminar primero las formas fundamentales, estructurales de intervención estatal cuya principal consecuencia es facilitar la explotación, y sólo después desmantelar las formas secundarias de intervención estatal cuya función es hacer la vida un poco más llevadera para la gente de a pie que vive bajo un sistema de explotación facilitada por el estado. Tal como lo dijo el blogger Jim Henley, romper el yugo antes de retirar las muletas.

En éste sentido, una propuesta para distribuír el ingreso petrolero entre los venezolanos de manera más eficiente y transparente, usando un mecanismo de transferencias condicionales parecido a “Bolsa Familia” en Brasil, probablemente sería apoyado por el anarquista de mercado como un paliativo necesario, al menos hasta que puedan desmantelarse las formas fundamentales de intervención estatal que son la principal causa de la pobreza.

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of “Markets Not Capitalism” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with “Markets Not Capitalism“.

$20.00 for the first copy. $16.50 for every additional copy.

Individualist anarchists believe in mutual exchange, not economic privilege. They believe in freed markets, not capitalism. They defend a distinctive response to the challenges of ending global capitalism and achieving social justice: eliminate the political privileges that prop up capitalists.

Massive concentrations of wealth, rigid economic hierarchies, and unsustainable modes of production are not the results of the market form, but of markets deformed and rigged by a network of state-secured controls and privileges to the business class. Markets Not Capitalism explores the gap between radically freed markets and the capitalist-controlled markets that prevail today. It explains how liberating market exchange from state capitalist privilege can abolish structural poverty, help working people take control over the conditions of their labor, and redistribute wealth and social power.

Featuring discussions of socialism, capitalism, markets, ownership, labor struggle, grassroots privatization, intellectual property, health care, racism, sexism, and environmental issues, this unique collection brings together classic essays by leading figures in the anarchist tradition, including Proudhon and Voltairine de Cleyre, and such contemporary innovators as Kevin Carson and Roderick Long. It introduces an eye-opening approach to radical social thought, rooted equally in libertarian socialism and market anarchism.

“We on the left need a good shake to get us thinking, and these arguments for market anarchism do the job in lively and thoughtful fashion.”  – Alexander Cockburn, editor and publisher, COUNTERPUNCH

“Anarchy is not chaos; nor is it violence. This rich and provocative gathering of essays by anarchists past and present imagines society unburdened by state, markets un-warped by capitalism. Those whose preference is for an economy that is humane, decentralized, and free will read this book with – dare I use the word? – profit.” – Bill Kaufmann, author of BYE BYE, MISS AMERICAN EMPIRE

“It will be hard for any honest libertarian to read this book – or others like it – and ever again be taken in by the big business-financed policy institutes and think tanks. In a world where libertarianism has mostly been deformed into a defense of corporate privilege, it is worth being told or reminded what a free market actually is. Our ideal society is not ‘Tesco/Wal-Mart minus the State.’ It is a community of communities of free people. All thanks to the authors and editors of this book.” – Sean Gabb, director, UK Libertarian Alliance

“Libertarianism is often seen as a callous defense of privilege in the face of existing (and unjust) inequalities. That’s because it too often is. But it doesn’t have to be, and this fascinating collection of historic and current argument and scholarship shows why. Even readers who disagree will find much to think about.” – Ken MacLeod, author of FALL REVOLUTION

CONTENTS

Part One: The Problem of Deformed Markets

• The Freed Market, William Gillis (2007)
• State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ,Benjamin R. Tucker (1888)
• General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (selections), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1851)
• Markets Freed from Capitalism, Charles Johnson (2010)

Part Two: Identities and Isms

• Market Anarchism as Stigmergic Socialism, Brad Spangler (2006)
• Armies that Overlap, Benjamin Tucker (1890)
• The Individualist and the Communist: A Dialogue, Rosa Slobodinsky and Voltairine de Cleyre (1891)
• A Glance at Communism, Voltairine de Cleyre (1892)
• Advocates of Freed Markets Should Oppose Capitalism, Gary Chartier (2010)
• Anarchism without Hyphens, Karl Hess (1980)
• What Laissez Faire? Sheldon Richman (2010)
• Libertarianism through Thick and Thin, Charles Johnson (2008)
• Socialism: What It Is, Benjamin R. Tucker (1884)
• Socialist Ends, Market Means, Gary Chartier (2009)

Part Three: Ownership

• A Plea for Public Property, Roderick T. Long (1998)
• From Whence Do Property Titles Arise? William Gillis (2009)
• The Gift Economy of Property, Shawn Wilbur (2008)
• Fairness and Possession, Gary Chartier (2011)
• The Libertarian Case against Intellectual Property Rights, Roderick T. Long (1995)

Part Four: Corporate Power and Labor Solidarity

• Corporations versus the Market, or Whip Conflation Now, Roderick T. Long (2008)
• Does Competition Mean War? Benjamin R. Tucker (1888)
• Economic Calculation in the Corporate Commonwealth, Kevin Carson (2007)
• Big Business and the Rise of American Statism, Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1971)
• Regulation: The Cause, Not the Cure, of the Financial Crisis, Roderick T. Long (2008)
• Industrial Economics, Dyer D. Lum (1890)
• Labor Struggle in a Free Market, Kevin A. Carson (2008)
• Should Labor Be Paid or Not? Benjamin R. Tucker (1888)

Part Five: Neoliberalism, Privatization, and Redistribution

• Free Market Reforms and the Reduction of Statism, Kevin A. Carson (2008)
• Free Trade is Fair Trade: An Anarchist Looks at World Trade, Joe Peacott (2000)
• Two Words on ‘Privatization,’ Charles W. Johnson (2007)
• What Are the Specifics? Karl Hess (1969)
• Confiscation and the Homestead Principle, Murray N. Rothbard (1969)

Part Six: Inequality and Social Safety Nets

• Let the Free Market Eat the Rich! Economic Entropy as Revolutionary Redistribution,Jeremy Weiland (2011)
• Individualism and Inequality, Joe Peacott
• How Government Solved the Health Care Crisis, by Roderick T. Long (1993)
• The Poverty of the Welfare State, Joe Peacott (1998)

Part Seven: Barriers to Entry and Fixed Costs of Living

• How ‘Intellectual Property’ Impedes Competition, Kevin A. Carson (2009)
• The American Land Question, Joseph Stromberg (2009)
• English Enclosures and Soviet Collectivization: Two Instances of an Anti-Peasant Mode of Development, Joseph Stromborg (1995)
• Health Care and Radical Monopoly, Kevin A. Carson (2010)
• Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty as We Know It, Charles W. Johnson (2007)

Part Eight: Freed-Market Regulation: Social Activism and Spontaneous Order

• Regulation Red Herring: Why There’s No Such Thing as an Unregulated Market,Sheldon Richman (2009)
• We Are Market Forces, Charles Johnson (2009)
• Platonic Productivity, Roderick T. Long (2004)
• Libertarianism and Anti-Racism, Sheldon Richman (2010)
• Aggression and the Environment, Mary Ruwart (1993/2003)
• The Clean Water Act versus Clean Water, Charles W. Johnson (2010)
• Context-Keeping and Community Organizing, Sheldon Richman (2010)

C4SS Senior Fellow and Trustee, Gary Chartier, recently participated in an extensive interview with James Corbett of The Corbett Report. Their topic of discussion was the life, trials and anarchist thought of the individualist-abolitionist anarchist Lysander Spooner.

Gary Chartier’s interview (37:54) is a part of The Corbett Report’s nearly hour long, Shoulders of Giants: Lysander Spooner, exploration of the life of Lysander Spooner.

From the show notes: While statists across America (and around the world) were celebrating the inauguration of Obama last weekend, anti-statists celebrated a festive occasion of their own: the 205th birthday of Lysander Spooner. Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we explore the life, works, and thought of Lysander Spooner, lawyer, entrepreneur, Deist, abolitionist, freethinker, and one of the giants of the American anarchist tradition.

Ésta es la tercera entrada de una serie escrita por Carlos Clemente como asignatura en un curso sobre introducción al anarquismo en el Centro para una Sociedad sin Estado (C4SS). Para la segunda entrada, hacer click aquí. Para la cuarta, aquí.

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Cualquier libro de texto de Economía le enseña a uno que los monopolios son malos. Cobran precios inflados a sus clientes por bienes de calidad mediocre, y explotan a sus trabajadores, pagándoles menos de lo que su trabajo valdría en un mercado verdaderamente competitivo.

Pero casi todos los libros de texto también nos dicen que los monopolios a veces son inevitables; que hay industrias en las que de alguna manera, los monopolios emergen como resultado de la dinámica competitiva del libre mercado. Y la única manera de corregir la situación, según nos dicen los libros de texto, es que el estado regule estos “monopolios naturales” para proteger los interses de consumidores y trabajadores.

Por otro lado, el anarquista de libre mercado ve a los monopolios como criaturas que no pueden sobrevivir sin la intervención del estado. Nos invitan a considerar más detenidamente lo que asumimos que son mercados libres y a descubrir las poderosas y sutiles fromas intervención estatal que abundan en las sociedades modernas, y que sistemáticamente favorecen a las grandes empresas establecidas de cada industria.

Por lo general se asume que los gobiernos deben subsidiar la construcción de autopistas, carreteras y otros tipos de infrastructura de transporte como prerrequsito indispensable para el desarrollo económico. Pero la perspectiva anarquista sobre éste tema le da una vuelta de 360 grados al argumento. Kevin Carson señala que al reducir artificialmente los costos de distribución, los subsidios al transporte permiten que las empresas establecidas en una industria crezcan mucho más allá del punto en el que las economías de escala adicionales serían compensadas por el crecimiento en los costos de distribución de no existir dichos subsidios.

Es así como los anarquistas de mercado coinciden con la izquierda tradicional en su denuncia de la WalMartización de la sociedad, pero difieren en su recomendación para remediarla: eliminar los subsidios al transporte, en lugar de subsidiar a las tiendas locales.

Además, los anarquistas de mercado han invertido una gran cantidad de tiempo y esfuerzo en investigar las distintas formas de ineficiencia e irracionalidad que surgen en las grandes organizaciones y las des-economías de escala que éstas crean. En este sentido, contradicen tanto a los economistas neoclásicos como a representantes de la escuela Austríaca de la talla de Ludwig von Mises, quien a pesar de criticar la pesadilla organizativa soviética, negaba la existencia de problemas de la misma índole en la mega-corporación capitalista; y van mucho más allá en su análisis del problema que otros austríacos como Murray Rothbard, que limitó su crítica a los problemas de formación de precios de transferencia dentro de la gran empresa.

Con el marco de análisis del anarquismo de mercado resulta mucho más fácil comprender la perversidad de la cultura corporativa actual, que predomina en una clase gerencial burocratizada tendiente al autoritarismo y al saqueo, poniéndola en franca oposición a los intereses de sus clientes, empleados y accionistas.

Es así como la intervención estatal es la que permite el crecimiento de una cultura corporativa sumamente parecida a la de la burocracia estatal misma. Y ésto no es sorprendente cuando se lo mira a través del paradigma del anarquismo de mercado, que denuncia al estado como la forma quintaesencial de monopolio.

La relación simbiótica entre corporaciones y estado crea una dinámica perversa de crecimiento económico que necesita de guerras imperialistas para autosostenerse. Las corporaciones se benefician de éstas guerras como proveedoras de material bélico, por la expansión de su sistema de privilegios a mercados foráneos, y por la deposición de capital sobreacumulado. El estado se beneficia con la mitigación del desempleo para pacificar al electorado, e institucionalizando una atmósfera de miedo entre los ciudadanos que le brinda la excusa para aumentar enormemente sus poderes.

La próxima vez que escuches que al proveer fondos para la construcción de infraestructura el estado promueve el desarrollo económico, recuerda que según la perspectiva del anarquismo de mercado, en realidad lo que está haciendo es subsidiar el Apocalipsis.

So long as one uses the Marxist propaganda term “capitalist” (other than in quotes to refer to the term rather than use it) one is surrendering the language to the statists. –Fred Foldvary

Au contraire. Definition: Capitalism is state rule by and for those who own large amounts of capital. Corollary: the purpose of such rule is to restrict innovation, arbitrage and re-allocation of investment, i.e, to eliminate Enterprise (that which entrepreneurs do).

Definition: Free Enterprise is unobstructed, unregulated and unintervened entrepreneurial human action, which, by its nature, cannot have any form of Statism, including Capitalism, present.

Anarcho-Capitalism should mean a social system wherein large holders of capital exist but do not attempt to use the State to capture or maintain their predominance; that’s legitimate if you also accept anarcho-communism to mean a system where Communists do not attempt to create or use a State to have everyone ruled by Communes, and Anarcho-Syndicalism to be distinguished from State Syndicalism (aka Guild Socialism or Fascism) accordingly.

Remember, the term Capitalist was invented as a pejorative by free-market advocate Thomas Hodgskin back in the 1830s and then picked up by Marx (who admired Hodgskin for inventing schools for labourers).

Freely as ever, SEK3 (Samuel Edward Konkin III) [July 24, 2000].