Di Sebastian Bn Zaydan. Originale pubblicato il 22 febbraio 2022 con il titolo American Incompetence, not Afghan Corruption. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Incompetenza Americana, non Corruzione Afgana: Consuntivo delle Buone Intenzioni

Come tanti altri bambini che vivono in Palestina, molti degli stranieri che ho conosciuto erano volontari e accademici benintenzionati che lavoravano ed erano pagati da istituzioni internazionali anche no profit. Questi giovani cosmopoliti, attivi sostenitori della causa palestinese erano l’idolo della mia fanciullezza. Con l’adolescenza arrivò il cinismo. Nonostante fossimo almeno dieci anni più giovani, sia io che i miei amici ci rendevamo conto facilmente della disorganizzazione e dell’inconcludenza che permeavano queste organizzazioni. Le mie opinioni su questi volontari, in quanto individui, cominciarono a cambiare. Ma la cosa più preoccupante erano i problemi generati da quella che noi chiamavamo “la cultura delle ong”: il soffocamento delle soluzioni durature, locali, dal basso, per dar spazio ad iniziative estemporanee di studenti nel semestre di pausa. Col tempo fortunatamente la critica riuscì ad imporsi sul discorso. Alla fine del primo decennio, espressioni come “il complesso industriale dei salvatori bianchi”, “volontarismo” e “pornografia del dolore” erano diventate luogo comune anche nei media più popolari.

La consapevolezza del fatto che le iniziative no profit presentino aspetti potenzialmente problematici è diffusa ancora oggi. Posso citare come aneddoto la mia esperienza di studente universitario negli Stati Uniti, quando ebbi a che fare con un’associazione di volontari che mirava ad offrire aiuto a chi aveva problemi di adattamento. Fui molto felice di apprendere che tra i requisiti minimi richiesti per i programmi c’era la cooperazione con i membri della comunità, l’iniziativa dal basso, la riflessione e l’esame minuzioso degli esiti. Quando una università con cui collaboravamo ci propose di inviare studenti del primo anno nei campi per rifugiati di Lesbo per insegnare “terapia artistica” ai figli dei rifugiati, il nostro comitato declinò l’offerta all’unanimità. Quando un rappresentante di un’altra ong propose di inviare studenti universitari volontari in qualità di allenatori di calcio in alcuni “campi di rifugiati africani” (uno di loro ammise di non aver mai giocato a calcio), noi non rispondemmo neanche.

Anche le grosse istituzioni tradizionali si fecero più caute, e le università impararono ad usare prudenza prima di lasciarsi coinvolgere in programmi volontaristici. Qualche volta si cercava di coinvolgere nel processo decisionale le persone coinvolte. Molti programmi di finanziamento cominciarono ad imporre come prerequisito la riflessione o la valutazione consuntiva.

Detto questo, c’è da rimanere stupiti a sentire i commenti ai recenti eventi in Afganistan. La settimana stessa in cui Kabul si arrendeva ai talebani, molte delle principali reti d’informazione, compresa la PBS, la NBC e la CBS, hanno diffuso filmati e titoli in cui John Soko, commissario straordinario per la ricostruzione in Afganistan nominato da Obama, parlava della “corruzione endemica” delle istituzioni afgane come causa principale della caduta del governo appoggiato dagli Stati Uniti. Che le reti principali tenessero alta la mitomania patriottica americana è normale. Più sorprendente è che l’argomento fosse ripetuto a pappagallo negli ambienti “progressisti”.

Durante la preparazione di un podcast sull’Afganistan, io e il mio gruppo abbiamo intervistato mezza dozzina di membri dello staff e accademici che avevano prestato attività volontaristica in Afganistan durante il ventennio di occupazione statunitense. Quando gli abbiamo chiesto quali fossero i punti deboli delle istituzioni a sostegno statunitense, ognuno di loro ha risposto parafrasando John Soko. L’idea assurda secondo cui è stato l’atteggiamento arretrato degli afgani a far collassare i moderni piani americani era diventata una verità scontata, ineccepibile.

Mi ha colpito in particolare un colloquio con membri di una nota università americana. L’esempio è interessante, e credo che serva ad evidenziare molti dei problemi tipici di questo genere di programmi. Questi accademici sono stati strumentali nella scelta di un centinaio di afgani con cui collaborare per un programma finanziato da USAID. La collaborazione tra l’università di Kabul e l’università americana in questione mirava a migliorare la rendita di particolari specie agricole. La creazione di un database nei server dell’università di Kabul e gli studenti da aiutare con il programma sono stati gli argomenti presi accuratamente in esame. Gli studenti selezionati erano all’80% donne in quanto a detta di questi accademici nel gruppo afgano il rapporto tra i sessi era troppo sbilanciato (in seguito è stato detto che il programma mirava a riequilibrare il rapporto uomo-donna). Dopo la presa di Kabul ad opera dei talebani, è stato necessario cancellare i server per preservare l’anonimato delle persone coinvolte. Le persone con cui ho parlato lamentavano la perdita di questo “indispensabile studio”. Oggi i rifugiati afgani faticano a farsi accreditare presso una università europea, dato che il loro titolo di studio afgano non è riconosciuto a livello internazionale. Il programma è costato decine di milioni di dollari.

Si può elogiare chi dedica i propri sforzi alla sicurezza dei colleghi afgani, ma è difficile ignorare la logica che sta dietro certe decisioni critiche fatte nei cinque anni di vita di questo programma. Si sa che l’Afganistan è un paese a potere decentrato, e come evidenziano molti pensatoi dell’Onu solo le iniziative portate avanti dalle comunità locali possono avere successo. Ma durante l’occupazione americana l’accesso ad internet non superava il 13%, concentrato nelle città principali che utilizzavano infrastrutture estere. A leggere il materiale diffuso dal programma, non è chiaro come i contadini potessero accedere a un database centralizzato su internet e trarne benefici. Per raccogliere i dati avrebbero dovuto mandare diverse volte l’anno una squadra afgana (composta perlopiù da donne) da Kabul alle varie località periferiche del paese. E poi: serve una laurea in biologia per dirigere un programma che mira al “riequilibrio del rapporto uomo-donna”?

Quando i miei interlocutori mi hanno detto che a rendere insostenibile le iniziative americane in Afganistan era la corruzione (quale fosse il nesso tra la corruzione e questo programma in particolare non è chiaro), io gli ho chiesto cosa si sarebbe potuto fare per garantire che l’iniziativa avesse un impatto durevole. La risposta è stata un silenzio assordante. Ancora tre mesi dopo il termine, e nonostante decine di inchieste sul loro ruolo nel salvataggio dei loro colleghi, questo gruppo, formato da distinti accademici, non riusciva a riunirsi per stilare un consuntivo o per fare una riflessione su un programma quinquennale costato milioni di dollari.

Le lezioni apprese in anni di riflessione sugli aiuti offerti in altre comunità in Afganistan sono state ignorate, e ora cogliamo i frutti amari. Occorre smentire la propaganda, bisogna dire che se in un mese sono andati in fumo vent’anni di progresso la colpa è dell’incompetenza americana, non degli afgani corrotti.

Tomorrow, March 12th, a group of self-proclaimed “patriotic socialists” (i.e. reactionaries) are gathering at the Austin Southpark Hotel. The event, “Free America from Neo-Liberalism,” will be hosted by Russia Today reporter and r/okaybuddytankie favorite Caleb Maupin, joined by Jackson Hinkle, Sameera Khan, Peter Coffin & Ms ACD, and Haz From “Infrared.” The rap sheet for all of these individuals is long, exhausting, and, for our present purposes, pointless. This is a deliberate attempt to radicalize white southerners with a surface-level emphasis on anti-imperialism and resisting neoliberal— sorry, “neo-liberalism.”

The venue, as of right now, has no idea who these people are. One phone call can change that.

Here’s how you can help:

1. Call the Austin Southpark Hotel at (512) 448-2222
2. Tell them you’re making an inquiry about an event on March 12th titled “Free America from Neo-liberalism”
3. Ask the clerk to take a message for the manager (if the manager is on the line, all the better)
   • Make sure you state Caleb Maupin’s full name and his direct ties to Russia Today
   • Express your concern that “heavy security” will be provided by Maupin/The Center for Political Innovation
   • Emphasize first and foremost that these people (and of course Caleb himself) are spreading Russian propaganda in the explicit interest of spreading disinformation and radicalizing locals to side with Russia
4. Remind them that you are a concerned caller who is worried about the kind of crowd (i.e. violent and disruptive folks) this will attract and the reputation of the hotel. You’re doing this for the hotel, not yourself.

This is only a rough outline of what, in my own experience, led the person on the other line to follow through. Feel free to add or omit whatever details you see fit.

Obviously there are many, many other more important issues with these folks than their ties to Russia, ranging from vehement antisemitism to genocide denial — and you’re absolutely free to recount these issues. I offer these points of emphasis mainly in the interest of your (and the hotel staff’s) time and to ensure this message is focused on issues that directly concern hotel management. As receptive as these folks seem to be, they probably don’t care about politics as much as we do, so I suggest emphasizing these core talking points instead. Remember, you’re trying to influence management at a private business, they don’t have time for a rant about the messy details of Maupin’s poor excuse for “journalism” (no matter how warranted it may be).

We will always stand against the tanks no matter where they roll up. Will you stand with us?

Jason Lee Byas has already articulated what I think is an interesting (and effective) challenge to Max Stirner’s critique of morality, as well as come to a conclusion that I very much endorse: namely, that self-interest and caring for the well-being of others need not be separate concerns.

In my view, the most important contribution that Byas has made in this discussion (and Chris Matthew Sciabarra has made a similar contribution) is to take, as given, the metaphysical groundwork that amoralists utilize. That is to say, Byas and Sciabarra assume that the “self” in “self-interest” is cleanly delimitated from other selves: the “self” that is “me” and the “self” that is, say, “Wayne Gretzky,” are separate entities leading separate existences. Under this assumption, should Wayne Gretzky and I ever interact, we remain two separate entities; clear boundaries remain between the two of us. As I said, showing how, even if we understand “selves” in this fashion, we can still marry self-interest and morality is important, because many immoralists take this assumption to automatically entail that they can disregard the interests of others.

I’d like to take a slightly different route and place questions of morality and self-interest in the context of complexity and complex adaptive systems (CAS). I’d rather emphasize the inherent interdependence between nodes in complex adaptive systems and note that we can reach a similar conclusion to Byas and Sciabarra: where they see self-interest being embedded within morality, CAS helps us see how morality (taken here to mean a general concern for the interests of others) is embedded within self-interest. And not just in a way where the only “acceptable” morality is one in which whatever furthers your own self-interest is “good”, such as in the traditional interpretation of Objectivism; CAS helps us see how behaviour that is traditionally labeled as “altruistic” is nonetheless behaviour that is in your self-interest to follow. 

We can reach this conclusion by realizing that in CAS,  one “part” (roughly analogous, here, to an individual “self”) is inescapably tied to the actions and reactions of other “parts” of the system. Thus, unlike in some thought experiments where the “self” is rather isolated from others (a “Robinson Crusoe” style situation), in a CAS, it’s unavoidable that the self will be impacted, however indirectly, by the actions of other “selves” — and vice-versa. The question that we could then ask is: how should a rational person act given this fact? We can even stack the cards against morality and say that, by rationality, we mean only a thin “merely-instrumental” variety of rationality, where all that matters is consistency between our intentions and our goals.¹

Given the nature of complexity, I think we’ll find that even a thinly rational person ought to be acting in the way Byas and Sciabarra delineate. That is to say that, under conditions of complexity, a thinly rational person will act towards other people’s interests the way an anarchist would act towards other people’s interests. 

The Nature of Complex Adaptive Systems

It’s widely accepted that humans are embedded within CAS, to say nothing of being a CAS in of ourselves. Multiple fields — biology, sociology, economics, political science, computer science, the list goes on — have assimilated lessons from complexity theory and applied them to their models of agent and institutional behaviour. This is to say that denying the fact that human beings are embedded in CA flies in the face of cutting-edge developments in all manner of fields that are concerned with understanding the nature of human beings and our societies. 

With that established, there are three facets of CAS that are important for my argument. The first is emergence: that is to say, in complex adaptive systems, interactions between parts generate higher-order phenomena that the parts do not possess on their own. One example would be neurons and consciousness: so far as we know, individual neurons don’t themselves possess whatever consciousness is. It’s only when neurons interact in a particularly structured network that something like first-person self-awareness exists. The more individual parts interact with one another, the greater the variety of emergent properties exhibited by the system. 

The second facet is that the adaptability of the system depends on the level of self-organization present in the system. For numerous reasons related to information dynamics and the relationship between ideas and experimentation (which, again, go beyond the scope of this essay), a system that organizes itself without the need for external control is better able to adapt to changing conditions. Anyone familiar with Friedrich Hayek’s critique of central planning, and his emphasis on the dynamic nature of markets, will recognize how incompatible adaptability and external control really are. 

The third facet is non-linearity. What non-linearity means in this context is that any interactions between parts of a system, no matter how small, can have significant effects on the system as a whole. For example, it doesn’t immediately follow that, in a complex system, the largest “parts” — like, say, the largest concentrations of power in a system — will produce the largest changes in output whenever they act. Relatively “minor” agents in a system may end up affecting the largest amount of change through their interactions simply because each agent magnifies the intensity of the change as it cascades through the system. 

A Thinly Rational Self-Interested Agent meets Complexity

Now enter our thinly rational self-interested agent. If they’re truly self-interested, and they’re exercising only a thin “instrumental” form of rationality, then — so the argument goes — they’ll only take into consideration information that helps them remain consistent in their intentions and goals and discard the rest as unnecessary. Now, there are numerous — numerous — problems with this conception of rationality, as the likes of Jon Elster and Edward F. McClennen have pointed out — but we’ll assume there aren’t any issues with it just for this argument. 

If the output of interactions between parts was linear, if the adaptability of a system didn’t depend on its ability to self-organize, and if emergence wasn’t a dominant facet of human systems, then it’s, if nothing else, not obviously counter-productive for you to disregard the interests of others. You’ll very likely miss out on the benefits of self-improvement, since you’ll be too busy bulldozing over other perspectives to give them any consideration. But, at first glance, it doesn’t appear as though you’re actively working against the accomplishment of your goals by doing so. 

Being embedded within a CAS, however, changes everything; and any agent that ignores the nature of the system they’re in is acting against their own self-interest (and, thus, is acting irrationally — even under a thin, “instrumental” definition of it). 

For one thing, the importance of self-organization means that domination, hierarchy, and initiatory force are all deeply counter-productive. The more you try to control the way people think or act or interact, whether directly through force or via more indirect measures (threats, fear, or “nudging” through some other form of incentive-manipulation), the less adaptable the system will be. This is problematic just on the level of basic survival, as rigid systems will be far more vulnerable to shocks and external threats (however you might define “threat”) than highly adaptable systems. 

But beyond concerns over survivability, the nature of CAS means that any agent that seeks to create a highly rigid social system will be actively restricting their ability to accomplish their goals — even if they place themselves at the top of a dominance hierarchy. Adaptive systems are better at processing information, learning from past actions, and changing their behaviour to reflect what they’ve learned. Adaptability, experimentation, and learning go hand-in-hand, in other words; and an environment that encourages self-organization, rather than restricting it, will provide all agents within that system with more options, tools, and resources to accomplish their goals. 

It’s in a rational agent’s own self-interest, in other words, to encourage self-organization, and push back against attempts to restrict self-organization. Just as Byas said in his last article, “The Authority of Yourself,” 

[I]t is in my own interest that I refuse to deploy aggression or domination against you, and it is in your own interest that you refuse to deploy aggression or domination against me.

It’s rational, in other words, to care enough about other people to respect them as autonomous agents.

A similar thing happens when we consider emergence: a thinly rational self-interested agent will want to have as large a variety of emergent institutions to choose from, because maximizing choice is the most effective general-principle available to ensure that an agent is prepared for any possible future. Supporting emergent institutions that further the process of emergence naturally follows from this, but given that institutions only exist because of the interactions of a more fundamental subsystem (i.e., interactions between human beings, in our case), what also follows is that it’s in the interests of a thinly rational agent to encourage rich and diverse interactions amongst all possible agents. This requires not only a robust form of negative freedom (i.e., no external authority controls who you interact with or under what conditions), but also a robust form of positive freedom — i.e., you’ll want to ensure that as many individuals from as many different backgrounds as possible have the capacity to engage in interactions with other agents. If they lack the material or symbolic resources to participate in these interactions, then the number of possible emergent institutions decreases; and with that decrease, the number of choices open to individual agents also decreases. 

Yet again, it’s in the self-interest of a thinly rational agent to care enough about others to respect them as autonomous agents, but with an even stronger condition  included: it’s in your rational self-interest to care enough about individuals to help them participate in rich interactions with others. Much like Peter Kropotkin argued centuries ago, mutual aid can be readily defended on “selfish” grounds. 

Finally, non-linearity strikes a deathblow against the notion that a society is best served by catering to the already rich and powerful — that is to say, it has deeply anti-hierarchical implications. If any individual can have a significant impact on the output of a CAS, then it’s in the best interests of any individual that wishes to profit from said output to encourage an egalitarian distribution of resources, or at least something that closely approximates an egalitarian distribution of resources. Indeed, as the dynamics of wealth distribution shift, it would be in the rational self-interest of all agents involved to periodically redistribute wealth in order to encourage non-linear effects from all parts of the system. Much ink has been spilt arguing that inequalities in wealth can be justified on the basis of incentives — that is to say, that industrious behaviour can be induced amongst the poor through inequality, so it’s better for everyone in the long-run if we make being poor a type of punishment. CAS, though, suggests the opposite: that we’re better off unconditionally spreading the wealth around, because even the smallest or seemingly most inconsequential actions of an individual can kick-start a transformation of the system as a whole. 

And so on. I could go on at great length discussing all the different facets of CAS and how they impact self-interest. What’s important is that the above discussion proceeds directly from a thinly rational self-interested agent encountering a CAS. Under conditions of complexity, egoism and morality — one that is against domination, hierarchy, inequality, and initiatory force — begins to blur. 

It’s a morality that looks awfully similar to the kind espoused by anarchists. 

Complex Rational Agents

The above discussion dealt only with a thinly rational self-interested agent encountering a CAS. But it was also noted that individuals themselves are CAS; our brains are complex adaptive systems, our nervous system is a complex adaptive system, and even our cells are complex adaptive systems. 

Does this impact how a thinly rational self-interested agent ought to act? I think it does, though fully exploring why would require me to move past the conditions I’ve set for myself for this discussion. 

The previous section’s discussion took, as a given, that individual agents have perfect knowledge of what their interests are and that these interests (or “preferences,” to use a more precise term) are static over time. But if an individual agent is expected to change based on their interactions with other agents or the external environment — be it through physical interactions or “merely” the exchange of information — then the assumption that preferences remain static over time seems fanciful. And note that it’s not a failure of rationality for someone’s preferences to be dynamic; if rigid social systems frequently fail because they’re unable to adapt or effectively problem-solve, the same principle holds for individual agents too.²

This is where it becomes difficult to maintain a “thin” definition of rationality, since the problems with that conception of rationality threaten to spiral completely out of control. That’s a discussion that’s well beyond the scope of this project. 

But it also becomes difficult, in my view, to maintain the metaphysical assumption that underlies most of egoism: that a clear demarcation-line exists between “me” and “you,” as stated at the beginning of this essay. The fact that human brains — let alone human beings in general — are CAS not only implies that our preferences are bound to change over time, but that what are preferences actually are likely won’t be known until the moment we have to put “skin in the game.” And even then, the most introspective individual might be presented with multiple reasonable interpretations of why they acted the way they did. Again, this isn’t a failure of rationality; it’s inherent in the nature of CAS. 

If individuals themselves don’t necessarily know what their own interests are a priori, and that’s partially because your own interests will be shaped by others as you interact with them, we start inviting questions about whether the notion of a “self” is in anyway coherent — if, in other words, it makes any sense to say that I’m a completely separate being from Wayne Gretzky.³ If the boundaries of the self are inherently fuzzy, then the very concept of “egoism” becomes incoherent. We’re in a situation where acting against the interests of others is identical to acting against your own interests; whilst, conversely, acting for the benefit of others is identical to acting in your own benefit. 

Personally, I have no problem with this line of thought — indeed, I endorse it wholeheartedly. But it’s a line of thought that deserves its own essay; it’ll likely be one far longer than this essay, too. 

The fact that human society is a CAS, though, drastically changes the relationship between morality and egoism. Altruistic benevolence is inextricably tied to self-interest — an altruistic benevolence that lines up closely with the kinds of ethics that anarchists frequently articulate and defend. A thinly rational self-interested individual will be motivated to follow the prescriptions of this kind of ethics because it’s in their self-interest to do so.     

Endnotes: 

[1] This is the rationality of homo economicus, and it’s also the rationality that, according to some thinkers, turns marketplaces into “morality free zones” (to quote David Gauthier).  

[2] Frank Miroslav discusses this in his contribution to the previous Mutual Exchange. In competitions to see which algorithm better accomplished a specific goal, evolutionary algorithms that were optimized for novelty outperformed algorithms that were optimized for achieving that very specific goal. 

[3] Note that as a Calgary Flames fan, I really don’t have any ulterior motives for wanting to be some hybrid entity with Wayne Gretzky. Jarome Iginla? Yes. But not Gretzky.    

MER host Alex McHugh interviews C4SS Russian translator Citizen Ilya on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, anarchist resistance to war, and what things look like on the ground in Russia. 

We intend this to be a two-part series. An interview with some of the folks behind the anarchist humanitarian project for Ukraine, Operation Solidarity, is forthcoming in the next week or so.

Links:

• The Black Headquarters / Resistance Committee (https://linktr.ee/Theblackheadquarter)
• Operation Solidarity / Project Solidarity (https://linktr.ee/operation.solidarity)
• “Donbas Recognition? No Thanks” (https://c4ss.org/content/56313)

De Bent Delbeke. Original: The Concentration of Capital, del 24 de agosto 2021. Traducido al español por Diego Avila.

La Concentración del Capital: Las Ventajas de los Mercados no Capitalistas

Un problema inherente al capitalismo (y quizás el mayor) es la concentración del capital. Veámoslo bajo una luz crítica.

La concentración del capital es un resultado directo de la construcción capitalista de la propiedad legal: al contrario a (por ejemplo) la libertad de expresión, que es un derecho muy práctico, este «derecho» es un derecho hipotético que sólo puede ejercerse si las circunstancias de uno lo permiten. No es el caso de las libertades puras, como la libertad de religión o la libertad de reunión, que cualquiera, en cualquier lugar, puede ejercer si lo desea. Al Estado, y a la mayoría de la gente, le parece normal que una persona no tenga los medios necesarios para ejercer este derecho, pero ¿por qué?

El problema de la concentración del capital se basa en este «derecho» de propiedad. Porque el capitalismo funciona según este principio: cuanto más capital se tiene, más rápido se multiplica ese capital. Y así, la suerte marca las clases, y la suerte (o la falta de ella) de nuestros antepasados sigue afectándonos hoy. La movilidad social puede ser mayor que nunca gracias a la tecnología, pero aún así se ve perjudicada por el capital y la propiedad. El trabajo es recompensado con salarios por hora que son una fracción del valor del producto que ellos, los trabajadores, producen, mientras que el capital se duplica, se triplica, con cada inversión… ¿Cuánto tiempo más podemos pretender que esto es de alguna manera una ley legítima de la naturaleza y no una construcción monstruosa inherente sólo al capitalismo?

La propiedad colectiva del capital es una solución obvia a este problema, pero ¿cómo la organizamos? Hay varias direcciones generales que se pueden seguir. Por un lado, está la propuesta de los leninistas y estalinistas: en la que el Estado es una especie de mediador para el proletariado, en todos los asuntos, así que la economía también. Esto no puede sino terminar en la tiranía de los burócratas que se llaman a sí mismos proletarios, pero son duques y reyes del terror rojo. En resumen: aristócratas corruptos, mafiosos. Este sistema es tan defectuoso como nuestra jerarquía actual, no debemos conformarnos con revertir o reformar las jerarquías del capitalismo y del Estado: debemos borrarlas. La segunda opción es la anarquía: tener todos los asuntos que en épocas anteriores se consideraban asuntos del Estado o del capital, en manos de comunas o asociaciones consensuadas. La tercera opción es una mezcla, en la que asuntos como la policía y la defensa siguen estando en manos del Estado pero de forma más democrática (aunque todavía electoralmente), pero los asuntos económicos se ponen en manos de los propios trabajadores.

La primera opción es la muerte del movimiento obrero y la tiranía asesina. La tercera opción es mejor, pero aun así, el Estado puede abusar de su poder, y la gente sigue dividida en clases.

En cambio, lo ideal sería considerar a la gente como individuos, como egos que flotan en la llanura, y todos estos individuos deberían tener el espacio de movimiento que merecen. Para ello, necesitamos la anarquía y la propiedad consensuada de los medios de producción y la organización consensuada de la sociedad. Sólo entonces liberaremos verdaderamente al pueblo, a todo el pueblo, no sólo a las personas de una determinada clase, raza, género o sexo.

Ahora bien, para elegir la forma en que estos colectivos voluntarios de individuos libres interactúan entre sí, sólo tenemos dos opciones: el mercado socialista, basado en la teoría valor-trabajo y el intercambio voluntario, o la economía planificada, basada en el principio de «a cada uno según su capacidad, a cada uno según sus necesidades». Es una escisión entre el anarquismo de inspiración más marxista, como el anarcocomunismo, y el anarquismo de mercado del mutualismo (seguido por el agorismo y el egoísmo, etc.), con los bakuninistas colectivistas en algún punto intermedio. Para mí, la decisión es clara.

Debemos favorecer el mercado, porque una economía planificada, en primer lugar, necesita de la burocracia, que en una sociedad anarquista es casi imposible de organizar. Porque todas las funciones que el mercado normalmente llevaría a cabo, serán entonces sustituidas por funcionarios y delegados elegidos. Estos están perfectamente bien si se cumplen los principios de la federación, por ejemplo, que esos delegados se adhieran plenamente a la voluntad de la comuna o del grupo. Sin embargo, no debería haber más de los necesarios, ya que esto es peligroso, pues cuantos más delegados y representantes se tengan, más posibilidades de que aparezca el poder y la jerarquía. Por lo tanto, debemos concluir que el mercado socialista tiene más en cuenta las libertades individuales de intercambio voluntario y es más eficaz en la lucha contra la jerarquía.

La propiedad y la concentración de capital inherentes al capitalismo arruinan ese mercado «libre» ya que crea jerarquías y desigualdades. Estas desigualdades no son sólo el resultado de los propios individuos. El mercado, si es verdaderamente libre, sin concentración de capital ni jerarquías de ningún tipo, aportará los motivos para que el cambio y la tecnología prosperen. Y por tanto, es nuestra mejor opción.

Okumak üzere olduğunuz makale, Alex Aragona tarafından kaleme alınmış. 27 Ağustos 2020 tarihinde “Anti Gun? Check Your Privilige” başlığı altında yayınlanmıştır.

Ateşli silah sahipliğine karşı olanlar, itirazlarını genellikle, resmen kült gibi olduklarını söyledikleri silahlarla ilgili aşırı hevesli tutumlardan hoşlanmadıklarını belirterek yönlendiriyorlar. Bu tutumların, alternatif çözümlere sahip çatışmalara karşı gereksiz yere şiddet içeren bir yaklaşımı teşvik ettiği de iddia ediliyor. Silah sahipliğine tutkuyla karşı çıkanlar en fazla avlanma için bir istisna görebilirler, ancak bunun ötesindeki herhangi bir fayda iddiasıyla, birinin evini savunması da dahil olmak üzere, genellikle silahların sorunları çözmekten ziyade tırmandırdığını ve daha da kötüleştirdiğini söyleyerek alay etmeye eğilimlidirler.

Bu görüşlere sahip bir kişi genellikle diğer alanlarda sosyal olarak ilerici ve liberal biridir- aynı zamanda Black Lives Matter gibi hareketlere derin sempati duyduklarını, polis reformu veya fonların kesilmesi çağrısında bulunduklarını ve ayrıcalıklarının farkına varırlarken başkalarını da bunu yapmaları için iteklediklerini tahmin etmek zor olmaz. Yine de bu toplumsal olarak ilerici görüşlerin, silah sahipliğine karşı militan muhalefetle buluştuğu yer, tam da bu inanç yığınının bizi bir paradoksa sürüklediği yerdir. Bırakın birinin neden silaha ihtiyaç duyduğunu, silah sahibi olma arzusunu gerçekten anlayamadıklarını söyleyenler, belirli bir silah sahipleri tiplemesine dayalı konuşuyorlar ve kendi ayrıcalıklı konumları konusunda bir farkındalık eksikliği sergiliyorlar.

Bu tutumun muhtemelen iki ana kaynağı vardır: Birçoğunun maruz kaldığı ve kendilerini üstün hissettikleri silah kültürüne karşı duyulan isteksizlik ve şanslı koşullarda yaşamanın rahatlığı. Bu koşullar şunları içerebilir: kolluk kuvvetleriyle nispeten az etkileşime sahip olmak, nezih bir mahallede yaşamak ve belirli bir sosyal statüye sahip olmak, ırkçılık konusunda deneyimsiz olmak veya kendileri için olumlu bir sonuç elde etmek için daha önce polisten yararlanmak.

Silah kültüründen başlayacak olursak, özellikle aşırı muhafazakâr bakış açılarıyla örtüşen unsurlarının kaç tanesinin, ciddi bir şekilde meydan okumaktan ziyade silah karşıtı bir bakış açısını zorla dayatmaya çalıştığı kolayca görülebilir. İnternette iki dakikadan fazla zaman harcayan herkes, silah yanlısı grubun yalnızca sakin, kendini savunma, hedef vurma hakkında net tartışmalar ve güvenlik ya da siyasi bir sebeple birini taşıma hakkını desteklemeye yol açabilecek entelektüel temellerle dolu olmadığını açıkça ortaya koyuyor. Bunun yerine, çoğu zaman sosyalizm ve “silahlarımızı toplayanlar” gibi şeyler hakkında (gerçekten veya mecazi olarak) politik saçmalıklar bağıran insan grupları bulunur. Bunu, çocukların iki yaşında ateşli silahlarla ilgilenmeye başlaması gerektiğini ciddi olarak iddia eden insanlarla birleştirin ve bu kadar çok kişinin, bazen onlarla sergilenen kültüre dayalı olarak silahlara karşı neden bir isteksizliğe sahip olduğunu anlamak kolay. Ateşli silahlara sahip olan ve bunlardan hoşlanan birçok kişi bile, silah sahiplerini düşündüklerinde sinerler. Bütün bunlar, birçoğunun, silahları çevreleyen siyasetin duruşlarının ve topraklarının yalnızca öfkeli beyaz erkeklerle ilgili olduğuna yanlış bir şekilde inanmasına neden oluyor ve bu demografinin silah sahibi olma olasılığının diğerlerinden daha yüksek olduğu doğru olsa da silah sahipliği hiçbir yerde bu gruba münhasır değil.

Bununla birlikte, bir dizi aracı çevreleyen kültürün bir yönüne yönelik eleştiriler, araçlar, bunların yararlılıkları ve kişinin bunlara sahip olma ve bunları kullanma hakkı hakkında yargıda bulunamaz. Nasıl bazılarının sosyal medyayı nefret dolu şeyler söylemek ve başkalarını kendi bakış açıları etrafında toplamak için kullandığını belirtmek, sosyal medyanın kendisine karşı bir eleştiri olmadığı gibi, bazı silah savunucularının şüpheli fikirleri olduğunu belirtmek de silah sahipliği ve silah sahibi olma hakkına geçerli bir eleştiri ya da duruş değil.

Her halükârda, benim deneyimim, birini silah kültürünün belirli yönlerinden hoşlanmamalarının onları gereksiz yere önyargılı hale getirebileceğine ikna etmenin nispeten kolay olduğu yönündeydi. Daha zor olan, birinin, özellikle de akıl yürütmelerinin çoğu, kendi korumaları için polisi aramaları gerektiği fikrine dayanıyorsa, silahlara karşı tutumlarının, göreli ayrıcalıklarına ve sosyal statülerine büyük ölçüde bağımlı olabileceğini fark etmesini sağlamaktır.

Pek çok kişi, başkalarının kolluk kuvvetleriyle etkileşime girerken kendilerini nasıl çaresiz ve tehlikede hissetmekle kalmayıp, ayrıca polisi yardıma çağırmanın bile kendileri veya toplumdaki başkaları için nasıl tehlikeli veya riskli olabileceğinin farkında değil. Kolluk kuvvetleriyle düzenli olarak (doğrudan veya dolaylı olarak) olumsuz deneyimler yaşamamak, kişisel korunma için en ufak ateşli silah sahibi olma arzusunun kaybolmasına yol açabilir.

İlk önce birinin şu ana kadar yaşamlarında kolluk kuvvetleriyle etkileşim düzeyini düşünün. Kolluk kuvvetleriyle çok az etkileşime sahip olacak veya hiç etkileşime girecek kadar şanslı olanlar (bir hız cezası veya trafik ihlali dışında), hayatlarının çoğunu en çok polislik yaptıkları sırada polisle uğraşmadan geçirirler. Polisle nadiren muhatap olmak ve onları, size zarar vermek isteyenlerden ziyade, sizinle sizin aranızda duran bir savunma hattı olarak görmek bir ayrıcalıktır. Çizginin hangi tarafında olduğunuza bağlı olarak, genellikle niyetinize veya “kötü adamlardan” biri olup olmamanıza değil, daha çok ten renginize, etnik kökeninize, zihinsel sağlığınıza, belirli bir yaşam tarzıyla ilişkili duruşunuza veya gelir ve mülk düzeyinize bağlıdır. Birçoğu için olay şudur, polislerle kötü anısı olanlar bunun için bir şey yapmışlardır ve kötü bir şey olduğunda aranması gereken polislerdir. Sirenler ve yanıp sönen ışıklar, karşı taraf için hızla ve gereksiz yere hayati tehlike oluşturabilecek ırksal profilleme, gereksiz taciz ve potansiyel olarak şiddet içeren durumların işaretleri yerine suçla mücadelenin ve mülkiyetin ve yaşam tarzının korunmasının sembolleri haline gelir bu sıradan insanlar için.

Polisle sınırlıdan biraz fazla etkileşimi olan biri bile, bu deneyimlerden, ateşli silah veya silah sahibi olma işiyle uğraşması gereken tek kişinin polis olduğu fikrini savunabilir, çünkü kolluk kuvvetleri olumlu bir şekilde yanıt verir onlara. Belki de birisinin kolluk kuvvetleriyle olan etkileşimleri, yardım çağrısını yapanlar olduklarında olmuştur. “İyi” veya nispeten zengin bir mahallede yaşıyorsanız, polisi aradıktan sonra, büyük olasılıkla itfaiyeyi aradıktan sonra olacak şeye benzeyen bir dizi olay yaşamanız daha olasıdır: Onları ararsınız, yanıt verirler, yangını söndürerek (polisin durumunda, “kötü adamları” yakalayarak) zarardan çok yarar sağlarlar, herkesin güvende olup olmadığını kontrol ederler ve başka nasıl yardım edebileceklerini düşünürler. Ve işleri bittiğinde ayrılırlar.

Tabii ki, diğerleri daha az varlıklı mahallelerde yaşıyor, farklı arabalar kullanıyor ve farklı bir ten rengine sahip. Bu kişilerin yukarıda özetlenen deneyim ve tutumlarla ilişki kurma olasılıkları daha düşüktür. Bunu zaten belirtmiştim ve pek çok kişi de polisin birçokları için nasıl zorba olabileceğini ve toplumlarına yarardan çok zarar verebileceğini araştırdı. Ancak diğer yandan, imtiyazsız veya dezavantajlı olmanın bir parçası da yardım için bir acil durum numarasını arayacak ama aynı zamanda polisin herhangi bir şey yapması muhtemel olmadığı için bundan hiçbir fayda sağlamayacağını deneyimlerinden bilen biri olmaktır. Ve ortaya çıkarlarsa, işleri iyileştirmek yerine daha da kötüleştirmeleri muhtemeldir. Belirli grupları ve toplulukları orantısız bir şekilde etkileyen polislik sorunlarının tamamı doğrudan değildir, aynı zamanda dolaylı da olabilirler. Gerçekten de mevcut düzenlemeler bazı toplulukları şiddet suçları ve mülklerinin güvenliği söz konusu olduğunda kâğıt üzerinde kendilerine söylenen yardımdan mahrum bırakıyor ve “sakinleri sürekli olarak yetersiz hizmet ve güvensiz hissediyor”. Kimseyi yardım için arayamıyorsanız, belki de kendinize güvenmeniz gerekir- ve size zarar vermek isteyenlerin silahları varsa, sizin de olmalı değil mi?

Bu sorunlarla yaşamaya ve bunların bilincinde olmaya zorlananlar (veya kendilerini bu konularda bilinçlendirenler), neden birçok kişinin koruma durumlarının polis tarafından değil de toplulukları veya kendileri tarafından daha iyi ele alınması gerektiğini ve ele alınabileceğini düşündüğünü anlıyorlar. Bunun doğal bir devamı, yalnızca polisin değil, kendilerinin ve en çok güvendikleri kişilerin silahları olması gerektiğine inanmaktır.

En azından, silah sahibi olmayı istemenin basit nedenlerini anlayamamış ya da sempati duyamamış biri mutlaka kötü bir insan değildir, ancak imkanları kısıtlı bölgelerde yaşayan birçok ayrıcalıksız insanınkine benzemeyen bir deneyim veya deneyimler dizisi yaşamıştır. Sonuç olarak, buradaki hiçbir şey, silahlar ve silah sahipliğiyle ilgili daha ince ilke veya sonuç noktalarını çürütmez veya doğrulamaz. Demek istediğim, silahlar ve silah sahipliği konusundaki görüşleriniz- tıpkı hükümet ve demokrasi, polis ve adalet, sosyal koşullar ve hiyerarşi hakkındaki görüşleriniz gibi – görece ayrıcalıklı durumunuza dayalı olarak içselleştirdiğiniz değerler ve deneyimlerle aynı hızda ilerleyen bir yönde önyargıya yatkındır. Bunu önleyemiyorsanız veya silahları düşünürken bu açıdan bakmamayı başaramıyorsanız, o zaman konuya veya kendinize bir faydanız yok demektir.

When we think of propaganda we tend to think of that associated with the worst totalitarian regimes of the 20th century; and the impression we then have is of a sort of Orwellian slogan-bombing which operates on the principle of getting people to assent, by threats of violence, to overtly admitted falsehoods so frequently and protractedly that they forget how to know what they knew. On the level of social psychology that is deeply frightening; our idea of it is nevertheless of something of a blunt instrument. It functions like a schoolyard bully, albeit a diabolical one.

By contrast the manner of Madison Avenue is that of a conman, a sophisticated one who might have made for a delightful crime farce screenplay had the actual historical result not been so calamitous. Like a swindler of this sort, these heirs to Edward Bernays assemble their teams of shills, plants, and stooges, assigning to each a specific role. They refrain from using words like “glawrious” and are instead rather self-effacing, speaking as they do by convoluted kinds of ventriloquism through voices apparently other than their own. Thus had they perfected what is today called astroturfing long before there was a word for it. Thus also had they developed their particular knack of dreaming up centuries of history and time-honoured traditions in the space of an afternoon.

To catalogue the full ambit of this would require a work far greater than this. In the field of urban design alone one could list the White Picket Fence as the age-old symbol of a sort of quiet, insular domesticity which only became practical with the automobile-based dormitory suburb after the mid-1930s. One could list the notion, strangely popular, that the roads infrastructure development painstakingly devised by state planners in response to the labour and output-consuming requirements of industrial policy was no more than the formalization of ancient cow-paths by successive paving-over. One could list the idea that cities were always things comprised primarily of office blocks, or at least precursor places of employment in the wage system, and that the homes of their citizens had always lain, strictly speaking, outside them. One could list all these things and not know where to stop.

My point in this instance is none of these things, but rather the way this presentation as ancient of things which are in historical proportion quite recent seems to be habitual. I encounter it often in debates and discussions of all kinds. I am saying nothing specific about the role of Madison Avenue in this: I should not hazard a guess as to who caught the disease from whom.

As an example, when yet again I sought to elaborate in a Facebook comment the systemic mechanisms of environmental degradation intrinsic to capitalism, I was met with the fairly standard reply that the problem was that people didn’t “respect nature” and, equally standard, that this has come along all the way from Abrahamic monotheism. Genesis 1:28 says, “fill the earth and subdue it,” and ever since we’ve all been doing our utmost to dump more toxic waste into more rivers than the next person. Of course the primary and overwhelmingly salient objection to this should be that if the structural aspects of the situation are properly understood it should be clear that they do not in any significant way hinge on an aggregate of what people respect or do not respect: moreover that if one were actually to go out and ask people one would learn that they respect a great variety of things, including “nature,” very intensely; and that it still makes no difference. At that moment all that was overshadowed by the fact that someone who claimed to be learned in the history of ideas should so underestimate the complexity of the concept “nature” — especially in a historical context.

In 1686, Robert Boyle endeavoured to list the senses in which the word “nature” was used in his time:

For sometimes we use the word nature for that Author of nature whom the schoolmen, harshly enough, call natura naturans, as when it is said that nature hath made man partly corporeal and partly immaterial. Sometimes we mean by the nature of a thing the essence, or that which the schoolmen scruple not to call the quiddity of a thing, namely, the attribute or attributes on whose score it is what it is, whether the thing be corporeal or not, as when we attempt to define the nature of an angel, or of a triangle, or of a fluid body, as such. Sometimes we take nature for an internal principle of motion, as when we say that a stone let fall in the air is by nature carried towards the centre of the earth, and, on the contrary, that fire or flame does naturally move upwards toward heaven. Sometimes we understand by nature the established course of things, as when we say that nature makes the night succeed the day, nature hath made respiration necessary to the life of men. Sometimes we take nature for an aggregate of powers belonging to a body, especially a living one, as when physicians say that nature is strong or weak or spent, or that in such or such diseases nature left to herself will do the cure. Sometimes we take nature for the universe, or system of the corporeal works of God, as when it is said of a phoenix, or a chimera, that there is no such thing in nature, i.e. in the world. And sometimes too, and that most commonly, we would express by nature a semi-deity or other strange kind of being, such as this discourse examines the notion of. 

— Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature

Boyle could, of course, have missed one or two senses, but not if those senses had been so dominant as that implicit in my above critic’s charge to be the primary, ordinary sense of the word. Yes, “nature” was personified commonly enough; yes, it was sanctified even when not actually deified. But while there is prior historical precedent for the use of “nature” for something which specifically excludes all that is human, that usage was rare and eccentric enough for Boyle to think it not worth mentioning, if indeed he had ever encountered it. Of that sacred realm of the verdant, sylvan, and wild, “untouched by human hands” and allegedly disrespected by all and sundry since the 9th century BCE, there was no sign at all.

This is of course by no means to suggest that a better appreciation of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “All things counter, original, spare, strange” would not be a very good thing. It is rather that calling all that “nature” would have been slightly odd even in Hopkins’ time. But that isn’t my point either.

My point is that it is remarkable, when one actually goes and hunts down the historical origins of many things popularly purported to be as old as the hills, how often one finds one’s quarry somewhere in a scatter pattern centred around the year 1750. As remarkable is how often one finds Jean-Jacques Rousseau mixed up in the business somehow, if only indirectly.

In this case, Rousseau’s role is quite central, as it was he who popularized this specific sense of “nature,” if he didn’t actually invent it. Over the next two centuries this sense would become so prominent that today everyone knows that that is what we mean when we talk about “getting close to nature.” It could be argued that taken to extremes this idea of the human being as intruder in nature, the idea that “we don’t belong here,” accounts at least in part for all the dodgy cults and philosophies premised on humanity having had an extraterrestrial origin.

But the principle is important: if we are to tackle ecology we need to be able to get our heads around the way the Medievals had a conception of “nature,” even of “Great Mother Nature,” as something which governs cities and property rulesets as much as bacteria and avian flight — this regardless of whether or not we credit notions of natural law. It would, for instance, enable us to see the soil build-up resulting from traditional riverbank agriculture not as a “human intervention,” with all its overtones of disastrous “interference” or “meddling” — i.e. “disrespecting nature” — but as a (possibly) valid ecological function: possibly because it should be judged according to the ecosystems which emerge, not according to whether or not humans are involved.

Anyone familiar with the work of Kevin Carson should be able to see here an echo of the way the actual historical origins of capitalism have been obscured by similar fables of ancient provenance. John Locke’s talk of a prehistoric “propensity to truck and barter” appears at as early a point in our scatter pattern as Rousseau appears late (and unsurprisingly Rousseau’s name appears in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page on Locke!) Events like the Inclosure Act of 1773, the first of a series of Parliamentary Inclosure Acts which were crucial in establishing the economic relations which made industrial capitalism possible through dispossession of much of the English and Welsh populations, fall well within our range. And it is events like these which are today commonly denied, ignored, or trivialized in order to present the economic relations underlying capitalism as eternal and inevitable.

The same pattern emerges when we try to place historically the origin of racism as a developed ideology, as opposed to mere instances of jingoistic bigotry or incidental contempt or convenient identification. Thorough analyses keep coming back to the first half of the 18th century, despite a number of possible precursors. In “How to be an Anti-Racist” (2019) Ibram X. Kendi would have us believe that racism goes back at least to Portuguese chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara, and insists that proof is to be found in his mid-15th-century chronicles. Despite my broad support for Kendi’s programme I find no evidence at all in my own reading of those works that he had a concept of race anything like what we know from the 19th century on. He characterizes some assemblages of Africans as pathetic and others as admirable, but there is barely any suggestion beyond the most hesitant and tentative that all Africans have an identity in common, nor that he has an identity in common with Norwegians or Greeks. He does have a conception of “Christendom,” as we should expect at the mid-15th century, as something with basically elastic boundaries, such that he has no compunction about including African Christians in it. There is one passing reference to the “Curse of Ham,” an idea which had cropped up sporadically and marginally during the Middle Ages, not always applied to Africans, and often signifying bad luck rather than inferiority. And being dependent on his royal patronage, Zurara was keen to flatter Prince Henry the Navigator in typically extravagant terms, at almost anyone’s expense. If we are looking for the roots of the idea-complexes which enabled the subsequent emergence of the likes of white-man’s-burdenery, geopolitical imperialism, scientific racism, racial eugenics, Fascism, Nazism, and apartheid, we won’t find them in Zurara — at least not in the sense of the discourse after Zurara being any different from what it had been before.

Likewise we will find in various American legal contrivances of the early 17th century little more than barefaced attempts to dispossess certain specific people in certain specific situations according to arbitrary distinctions of appearance. The characteristic concepts of ideological racism were simply not there, not even where we should expect casually to find them. Decades later at the Cape of Good Hope, the diary of Jan van Riebeeck shows by turns affection and contempt towards Autshumao of the ||ammaqua, and later impatience driven by shameless greed, but the racist categories we might have expected to be overtly abundant are conspicuously absent. Yet barely half a century later we begin to see the core ideas of racism being enthusiastically exchanged in certain European intellectual circles. We find Immanuel Kant considering them; we find G.W.F. Hegel building grand cosmic castles out of them, a nefarious box of Lego for Arthur de Gobineau to play with at the middle of the 19th century. After that, plain, palpable, unmistakable racist positions come thick and fast: a torrent after three centuries of hints and shadows, if that.

The lesson to be learned from all this is that the European colonial project and the slave trade which was an essential component of it predates the invention of racism, through the construction of “race,” by several centuries. Racism did not cause the slave trade; the slave trade caused racism, and that at some historical remove.

This is important to understand today, when the world is faced with the unexpected rise of dangerous Fascist-like ethnic essentialist ideologies among communities hitherto counted among the victims of racism. I think of Hindu nationalism in India, and the concomitant violent heavy-handedness which is only to be expected once it is realized that these are movements of the right, very much and nothing other than movements of the right. But I think also of disturbing currents here in Africa, which unquestioningly embrace wholesale the structure and much of the fabric of European colonialist ideology: the belief in eternally distinct “races” in constant conflict for survival through dominance, of which individual persons are mere semi-real emanations; which necessitates the idea that racism has not only always existed but that it was the primary motivation for the European colonial project, arising out of the “essential hatefulness” of the “white race.” Thus it gets all the causality backwards, every last bit of it. It is content to repeat “race is a construct” as a mantra, but its account of the mechanics of the construction of “race” presupposes the prior (indeed the eternal) constructedness of “race.” That is like laying the blame for the invention of the myth that there is such a thing as the Tooth Fairy on the Tooth Fairy!

And indications are that there is more to it than Steve Biko’s work to counter the dehumanization of black identity gone horribly, unrecognizably wrong. For here we return to Madison Avenue, at least in spirit: to the 2016 activities of now-defunct British PR outfit Bell Pottinger and their introduction of the expression white monopoly capital into South African political discourse, in efforts not only to legitimize the kleptocracy of the Zuma administration but also to create a popular conflation of capital with the “white” demographic at large, regardless of whether or not this specific white person or that specific black person actually owns any significant capital. It should be obvious how this relies on a myth of “ancient race” and therefore “ancient racism,” in order to carry the idea that capital is controlled not by persons or by organizations, nor by the structures of systemic function Marx so whimsically called “classes,” but by “races.” That makes it unimportant that I am without a bean — indeed that I have a very real Bakuninian interest in furthering the practical economic liberty of my black neighbours and in wiping any such thing as a separate white identity from the face of the earth: if Johann Rupert has billions, then any mass of flesh might legitimately be cut from my rump. And worst of all, it leaves extant structural racism emphatically intact.

I think we’ve dodged that one, for the most part: but the enabling ideas remain.

Muammar Gaddafi was, is, and always will be a controversial figure. Though his rise from Bedouin nomad to ruler of Libya is impressive, many of the things he did while in control of the country were unquestionably authoritarian and criminal. However, Gaddafi began as a sort of liberator. He joined the Libyan military in the early 1960s and later became one of the leading figures behind the 1969 coup to overthrow King Idris. With the monarchy successfully abolished, Gaddafi seized power and transformed Libya into the Libyan Arab Republic. Eventually, Gaddafi decided to put his political, social and economic views on paper in a brief volume entitled The Green Book, first published in 1975, with an English version distributed worldwide a year later.

Summary

Part 1: The Solution to the Problem of Democracy

In this opening section of The Green Book, Gaddafi argues that “democracies” as we know them are actually highly authoritarian and anti-democratic. He states that parliamentary systems, while well-intended, often end up misrepresenting the interests of the very people they were established to to serve. Partisan politics, he asserts, will always end up resulting in politicians serving the interests of the party rather than the people who voted for them. Gaddafi argues that direct democracy, as opposed to representative or parliamentary democracy, is the best remedy for this problem. 

Additionally, he says that class conflict will always result in the most powerful class dominating the lower classes, particularly through political means, so it is essentially useless for the upper class to try to appease the lower classes in a one-size-fits-all way because appeasement will never be enough to keep the lower classes happy and they will always have different interests than those of the ruling class. Gaddafi goes on to outline his specific vision for direct democracy. He says that direct democracy should be carried out through what he calls “Popular Conferences” and “People’s Committees.” Basically, “Popular Conferences” are decentralized electoral bodies elected directly by the people that are divided into two groups: Basic and Non-Basic Popular Conferences. In turn, These Popular Conferences elect members to People’s Committees. He goes on to say that the “true definition” of democracy is “the supervision of the people by the people (p. 25).”

Next, Gaddafi addresses laws and where their basis should come from. He argues that laws should be based in religious or traditional principles and says that secular constitutional law is “invalid and illogical” because it “ … lacks the natural source from which it must derive its justification (p. 26).” Later on, he describes how direct democracy will help in increasing freedom of the press, something he says everyone should be entitled to, including individuals and corporations.

Part II: The Solution to the Economic Problem

Gaddafi begins by acknowledging that conditions for working people in modern times are better than they were at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. However, he says, policies like overtime pay, social security, the right to strike and limits on working hours don’t go far enough in making the life of an average working person bearable and politicians from across the spectrum have failed to deliver on meaningfully liberating workers from their oppressors. He also makes the point that public sector workers aren’t treated that much better than private sector workers. He poignantly states, “Wage-earners are but slaves to the masters who hire them. They are temporary slaves, and their slavery lasts as long as they work for wages from employers, be they individuals or the state (p. 42).” 

He argues for the abolition of wages and communal ownership of the means of production. He also makes the argument that technological advancement will reduce the hours and numbers of workers needed to produce and provide goods and services. He goes on to say, “The freedom of a human being is lacking if his or her needs are controlled by others, for need may lead to the enslavement of one by another. Furthermore, exploitation is caused by need (p. 46).”

One example Gaddafi gives of an essential “need” is housing. He advocates for universal housing and appears to support rent only in the form of voluntary compensation. He also argues that each person should be entitled to no more than a single house. In regard to one’s income, Gaddafi argues that a worker should be entitled to a full return on the product of his or her own labor and not be given in the form of wages or charitable donations. He then takes a short detour (pun intended) to argue for public transportation against private transportation. Finally, he asserts that land is an essential resource and should therefore not be privatized, but owned by the community as a whole and distributed according to use (for instance, a farmer will obviously need more land than someone who just works in a factory). 

Gaddafi continues by voicing his opposition to the profit motive, his support for trade unions and strikes, and reiterating his support for the abolition of wage labor. He concludes Part II by railing against people for employing and exploiting “domestic servants.” He says that, much like other wage-earners, domestic workers are essentially “slaves” and are woefully mistreated. Gaddafi states that all household work should only be the responsibility of the members of that household and that it is unacceptable to outsource that work to underpaid and mistreated employees who have no connection to the household whatsoever. 

Part III: The Social Basis of the Third Universal Theory

In this final section of The Green Book, Gaddafi lays out his views on certain social issues and posits that his general philosophy, which he calls the Third Universal Theory, is the best way to structure society because it is based around national and tribal principles. He counters the Marxist assertion that history is essentially a long series of class struggles with his own inference that history is dominated by a series of national struggles. He acknowledges that within nations there are fierce sectarian divisions based on factors such as religion and culture, but he believes that the struggle to survive will ultimately force nations to unify if their existence is threatened. He then goes on to talk about the family being the true bedrock of society, and that tribes are just one unit larger than families. 

Additionally, he discusses how, as the world population grows, the more distant we feel from one another. He once again uses the tribe as a model to demonstrate how feuding factions can tear the entire structure apart, and he believes this is happening on a much larger scale in the world as a whole. According to Gaddafi, nationalism shouldn’t be done away with. Rather, it should be preserved and embraced because it, to him, is the most effective way at bringing people together and keeping them together longer in a much stabler system. 

Next, Gaddafi discusses his views on women. He begins by railing against anti-female discrimination and, while acknowledging that there are differences between men and women, asserts that both men and women should be treated equally. He even points out that males have it easier than females because they don’t get pregnant or go through menstrual cycles or miscarriages. He goes on to essentially advocate for some kind of supported maternity leave on the grounds that a child must bond with its mother to be brought up properly and no parent should outsource motherly duties to nurses, babysitters or daycare providers. He continues by arguing that women should not be expected to have careers or do odd jobs. Gaddafi believes women should work if they want to, but they shouldn’t feel compelled to do so.   

Gaddafi then transitions to talking briefly about minorities and issues involving minority rights. In summary, he posits that the state is unfit to truly rectify the injustices done to minorities. He argues that states who supposedly grant minority rights can easily take them away. To Gaddafi, the only solution to the problem of minority rights is to lift minorities up through non-state means (“the people”), thus avoiding the “dictatorial” approach usually taken by the state.

He expands on this by predicting that black people around the world will triumph against white people, despite several obstacles like unemployment, poverty and lack of access to healthcare and birth control. 

Next, Gaddafi eviscerates centralized, state-run education, which he says has led to the suppression of freedom, intelligence and creativity, and has fostered a “forced stultification of the masses (p. 99).” He believes students should be free to choose to study the subjects that interest them instead of being coerced by the state into learning boring, irrelevant drivel that will never help them in life. He also advocates for the teaching of both religious and secular subjects in schools and says the complete omission of either one would be a mistake. 

He then moves on and discusses art, music and language. Gaddafi states that throughout human history, the lack of a single, unifying, universal language has been a serious problem. However, art can be interpreted and understood by everyone, no matter what language they speak. He then clarifies that the lack of a universal language isn’t necessarily a problem in and of itself, but, paraphrasing, it is the fact that is highly unlikely that even if a universal language were to be created, it would ever be instinctual for people to use for generations. 

Gaddafi concludes Part III by using sports as an analogy for wealthy individuals hoarding their riches from the masses (e.g. where they sit in relation to other fans in the stands) and he argues that sports, just like political power, should be accessible to all people, not just a few privileged elites. He wraps up the book by saying that Bedouin people, like Gaddafi, tend to be more interested in athletics than in performing arts because they don’t see much value in performing. Gaddafi hopes that this trend will change.

The Good    

The book is written– for the most part– in simple, direct language, which makes it a more accessible piece of work than, say, some complex academic diatribe. This is absolutely one of the book’s strengths. Another strength is the book’s brevity. The Green Book is a little over 100 pages long, and some of its “chapters” are merely a paragraph or two confined to a single page. Many people, especially political figures, talk a lot but say nothing. Gaddafi does some of that in this book, but he largely keeps even his more substantive points short, sweet and to the point.

Speaking of substance, I agree with Gaddafi on several points. As shown above, he makes a lot of anti-state, pro-libertarian arguments and calls for the decentralization of governmental and workplace structures. These are wonderful policies to advocate for because they allow people to live the freest and happiest life possible in an environment free of both state and corporate coercion. 

Also commendable is Gaddafi’s defense of mothers and his view that they should spend more time with their children and less time doing meaningless labor in order to provide for them. Providing for your children means nothing if you can’t spend time with those very children as a result of you being tied up at work all the time. Related to that, I also thoroughly enjoyed Gaddafi’s thrashing of wealthy people who hire poor domestic servants to literally do their dirty work for them. Many of those domestic servants may have kids at home who would very much appreciate having them around. 

Additionally, Gaddafi’s advocacy of universal housing was nothing short of brilliant. Everyone deserves shelter, and Gaddafi understood that. In fact, he actually implemented this policy in Libya and it was quite successful. I also agree with him that all land should be owned by the community and distributed according to need. 

His simple, direct advocacy of the abolition of profits and wages is the correct strategy for explaining those policies to people. This allows for a less complicated conversation with others who may not be familiar with socialist or anarchist theory. Overcomplicating certain concepts can sometimes be a problem for socialist and anarchist discourse, but The Green Book offers a reasonable alternative to consider when explaining some of our ideas.

Finally, Gaddafi’s support for black people and feminism might not seem like a big deal to us today, but these were still fairly new and, dare I say, “radical” concepts in certain parts of the world in the mid-1970’s. However, Gaddafi obviously didn’t care if he offended anyone simply by calling for marginalized communities to be treated like human beings. That’s something he deserves an enormous amount of respect for.

The Bad

While there are many parts of The Green Book that are clearly anti-statist, Gaddafi never clearly outlines how he or “the people” are supposed to rid themselves of the state. Is it through revolutionary means? Nonviolent resistance? General strike? I’m genuinely not sure because nothing in the book addresses any coherent strategies for transitioning from a statist to a stateless society. 

Additionally, while Gaddafi voices support for socialism on a few occasions in the book, he also appears to support corporate media outlets and says they are entitled to freedom of the press like any other outlet. While this should be the case and government censorship should never be the answer to any problem, it’s not clear why Gaddafi randomly brings up the corporate press and effectively defends them.

Finally, the structure of society and governance upon which Gaddafi’s “Third Universal Theory” is based is very confusing to me and the one part of the book that does seem to be overly complicated and not very well thought-out. The “Popular Conference” idea is okay, but I don’t see a need to break the Conferences up into two separate groups and then have these groups elect an unaccountable group (“People’s Committee”) that meets at most a few times a year. To me, that sounds like a needlessly bureaucratic and hierarchical structure that is not unlike the structure of a state. Gaddafi makes no solid argument as to how this bureaucracy can be prevented. Essentially he makes a tautological “it’s a better structure because it is” argument. It isn’t better because all you’re doing is replacing one bureaucracy with another. In addition to the problem of bureaucracy, he doesn’t offer any clear direction on how workplaces should be structured. As noted above, he advocates for the abolition of wage labor, a mutalist style of compensation for labor and a decentralized workplace structure, but he doesn’t say anything about whether workplaces should be represented by workers’ councils or should be structured a la Mondragon, etc. 

The Ugly

The Green Book has many enjoyable moments. Even most of the parts I disagreed with were interesting and satisfying to read. Regardless, there were a few moments that made my jaw drop. First, Mr. Gaddafi makes several references to “natural law” and “human nature” throughout the text. This shocked me, because these terms are usually used by people with extremely conservative views, not necessarily by revolutionaries. It is possible for one to be somewhat socially conservative and have socialist economic views, but people with revolutionary views on economics also tend to be progressive on social issues. Putting aside that appeals to nature are logical fallacies, it is important to restate that Gaddafi did support black people and women, but he also makes derogatory and stereotypical remarks about both groups in this book. When discussing women, Gaddafi assures readers that women are naturally and inherently “gentle,” while males are inherently “strong and striving.” He goes on to rant about how society is trying to turn men into women and women into men.

This assertion could easily be found today on any far-right media site. Also like these sites, Gaddafi claims that specific gender roles and traits are actually liberating. This is truly misguided. There is nothing wrong with effeminate men or masculine women. There is nothing wrong with trans people. Traditional gender roles are an antiquated idea that should not be taken seriously anymore. 

Lastly, the way Gaddafi talks about black people is quite problematic. He is obviously very supportive of black liberation, and that is a noble position, but his attitude toward black people is condescending and dominated by racist stereotypes. He rightly acknowledges that black people around the world have been held back by systemic factors resulting from colonialism and exploitation, but he also blames black people for being too quick to get married, having too many children, and “being less obsessive about work” than other races because they live in a hot climate. In other words, Gaddafi is basically implying that black people are lazy and sexually promiscuous, which are incredibly harmful and counterproductive stereotypes used by the very colonialists he claims to be against. 

Overall Assessment

The Green Book, much like Muammar Gaddafi himself, is a mixed bag. It’s filled with good ideas, bad ideas, contradictions, logical fallacies, brilliant observations, incoherent solutions, and concrete policy goals. Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anarchists and socialists, but it’s certainly not Mutual Aid, The Conquest of Bread, or What is Property?. These books weren’t perfect either, but they were certainly more coherent and, for the most part, less condescending and reliant on stereotypes. Gaddafi wasn’t the boogeyman Western governments made him out to be, but he was also not without his flaws, and The Green Book displays those flaws for all to see. Having said that, his political intelligence is also on display, as is his apparent understanding that everyone deserves to have their basic needs met and deserves to be treated with dignity, and that is admirable.  

To conclude, let me be absolutely clear: I am not a Gaddafi apologist and I do not endorse his criminal actions in any way, shape or form. While some of his policies were decent, it would have been better if he was more true to his word and left those decisions in the hands of his people rather than implementing state-directed policies through a centralized government. As I said in the beginning, Muammar Gaddafi should always be remembered as an authoritarian.

One of the points I was trying to make in reviewing this book is that some of the policies in it appear to be geared toward decentralization and democracy, yet Gaddafi hypocritically ignored his own theories and policy prescriptions. There is simply no excuse for that. I apologize if this wasn’t made clear earlier in the article.        

I have a saying that goes something like: ‘I don’t trust anybody who thinks taxation is theft but profit isn’t.’ The former is a common sentiment among libertarians left and right, who argue, like Michael Huemer, that “[w]hen the government ‘taxes’ citizens, what this means is that the government demands money from each citizen, under a threat of force: if you do not pay, armed agents hired by the government will take you away and lock you in a cage” [1]. The affirmative of the latter is a less well known sentiment but is rooted in Marxist exploitation theory. Richard Wolff explains in Democracy at Work: A Cure For Capitalism how profit…

is the excess of the value added by workers’ labor—and taken by the employer—over the value paid in wages to them. To pay a worker $10 per hour, an employer must receive more than $10 worth of extra output per hour to sell. Surplus is capitalists’ revenue net of direct input and labor costs to produce output.

This argument is based in the labor theory of value, which is rejected by most right-libertarians. Kevin Carson, in Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, rehabilitates it as the tendency of prices fall to the cost of production in the absence of artificial restrictions like state-sanctioned monopolies, but even if one rejects this, the logic of the LTV actually comes very close to the Lockean principle of ownership acquisition via mixing one’s labor. Cory Massimino explains:

For 19th century anarchists, the labor theory of value, or “cost limit of price,” was the natural extension of the individual’s absolute sovereignty over themselves. Labor was seen as the source for all wealth, and the laborer naturally owns the fruits of their labor as an extension of their self-ownership. Tucker’s theory of value was intimately related to his ethical views based on each individual having sole dominion over their body and their justly acquired property, which required labor mixing.

By this logic, profit could be considered theft from the same libertarian principles that outline taxation as such. And this has already more-or-less been done by proto-libertarians like Dyer Lum, who decries “taxation, profits, and rent” as “superimposed burdens” on “Labor.”

Most right-libertarians would argue, however, that profit is earned from the voluntary exchange between employer and employee based on the former’s ownership of the means of production. But one can take a libertarian position to as extreme a point as Karl Hess did and suggest that much of what people call private property is actually…

stolen. Much is of dubious title. All of it is deeply intertwined with an immoral, coercive state system which has condoned, built on, and profited from slavery; has expanded through and exploited a brutal and aggressive imperial and colonial foreign policy, and continues to hold the people in a roughly serf-master relationship to political-economic power concentrations.

One can also look at the primitive accumulation, subsidies, regulatory capture, and monopoly privileges that have favored capitalists over the entire course of U.S. and global history. As such, Carson proposes that, from the dialectical libertarian perspective outlined by Chris Matthew Sciabarra, “the corporate economy is so closely bound up with the power of the state, that it makes more sense to think of the corporate ruling class as a component of the state.” This would ultimately mean that, like Logan Glitterbomb explains, because all large-scale private ownership of the means of production is “the result of theft, coercion, enclosure, corporate subsidies, state licensing regimes, zoning laws, government bailouts, tax breaks, intellectual property laws, and other political favors,” it is therefore “illegitimate,” and capitalists have less of a claim to its ownership than the worker. Glitterbomb allows “while, yes, if the original owner can be found, the property should revert back to their control and the decisions about what to do with it should rest with the original legitimate owner, as [Murray] Rothbard and many others have pointed out, finding the original or ‘legitimate’ owner can sometimes prove to be difficult or even impossible. It was in such a case that Rothbard claimed that the next best option was to turn such property over to those who have put the most labor into it recently, the workers.” By this analysis, workers generally have a greater claim over the means of production than capitalists, thereby making the extraction of surplus value a form of theft.

If one accepts this argument, what then is next in terms of praxis? The immediate solution to the taxation problem according to many libertarians is agorism. Agorism, as a refresher, is a left-libertarian anarchist strategy developed by Samuel Edward Konkin III that, as Derrick Broze explains,

seeks to create a society free of coercion and force by using black and gray markets in the underground or “illegal” economy to siphon power away from the state. Konkin termed this strategy “counter-economics”, which he considered to be all peaceful economic activity that takes place outside the purview and control of the state. This includes competing currencies, community gardening schemes, tax resistance and operating a business without licenses. Agorism also extends to the creation of alternative education programs, free schools or skill shares, and independent media ventures that counter the establishment narratives.

It is important to note, however, that not all agorism must take place in the grey or black market—only horizontal agorism must meet this criteria. Broze describes alternatively a vertical agorism that includes things like “participating in and creating community exchange networks, urban farming, backyard gardening, farmers market, supporting alternatives to the police, and supporting peer to peer decentralized technologies.” These practices “can be considered agorist in the sense that they are aimed at building self and community reliance rather than dependence on external forces, but they are not explicitly counter-economic because they do not involve black and grey markets” [2].  This is not only about taxes as it runs deeper toward avoiding as much state intervention as possible, but the movement toward black, grey, and informal markets is generally avoidant of taxation in one way or another.

This covers taxation, but what about profit? Interestingly, while ‘taxation is theft’ appears to be a more well known slogan than ‘profit is theft,’ the solution to the latter is perhaps more well known: cooperatives. Based on the assertion that the primary problem of capitalism is the exploitation of surplus, Wolff advances that worker-owned businesses should replace “the current capitalist organization of production inside offices, factories, stores, and other workplaces in modern societies. In short, exploitation—the production of a surplus appropriated and distributed by those.” In such an enterprise, profit as it exists in capitalist businesses does not appear even when the profit motive is utilized because the surplus value is controlled democratically as opposed to being appropriated by capitalists. And worker-owned cooperatives, as with all cooperatives, function under seven central principles:

1. Voluntary and Open Membership

2.  Democratic Member Control 

3. Member Economic Participation 

4. Autonomy and Independence Education

5. Training and Information 

6. Co-operation among Co-operatives 

7. Concern for Community

These principles define not just individual cooperatives but the cooperative movement as a whole, which whether explicitly or not, is attempting to shift the primary mode of production to a cooperative one. For example, Cooperation Jackson outlines their “basic theory of change” as being “centered on the position that organizing and empowering the structurally under and unemployed sectors of the working class, particularly from Black and Latino communities, to build worker organized and owned cooperatives will be a catalyst for the democratization of our economy and society overall.”

What I propose then is that principled opposition to both taxation and profit be combined into a ‘cooperative agorism.’ Admittedly this term is already in use by the subreddit r/cooperativeagorism, who describe it as “a social strategy, that consists of influencing the political landscape by means of peacefully improving and strengthening civil society in critical ways.” These include things like a Farm-To-Consumer Defense Fund or the mafia distributing food to those in need in Italy. And what I’m talking about is certainly not mutually exclusive from this but rather more specifically the practice of agorism using cooperative principles. Let’s say Emma is selling x, where x is a (non-violent) illegal or off-the-books product or service. Instead of selling x as an individual, Emma could pool her resources with other interested parties and establish an informal cooperative outside of the taxable wage labor economy. Emma could start an off-the-grid, farm-to-consumer herbalist commune or get all the kids in the neighborhood into an equal-shares babysitting business or team up with IT nerd friends to undersell big tech corporations in their city with a DIY computer co-op. In all these scenarios, profits would be pooled and distributed democratically, resources and knowledge would be shared with other informal (and sometimes formal) co-ops, and concern for the local community would be a high priority.

A fairly new and innovative example of this type of project is—despite my strong misgivings about blockchain and cryptocurrency—the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) [3]. These organizations are “designed to be automated and decentralized” and act primarily “as a form of [cryptocurrency] venture capital fund, based on open-source code and without a typical management structure or board of directors.” A post on Comrade Cooperation accounts how “[t]he switch from a 9–5 job to becoming a part of a DAO gave me an entirely new vision of work” because…

I have become the manager of my own work. I track hours on the tasks I complete. I review my peers’ work and we all vote on the next steps of the two big projects we are building. This allows us to keep everything transparent, and each member’s contribution is rewarded with a share of the profits. The system is fair, and all the rules and decision[s] we make are recorded on the Blockchain.

These function through the blockchain, which—though not as decentralized as many would have you think—allow them to stay out of the reach of the state in many instances. And because of its use of blockchain and cryptocurrency, this follows the classic style by which, according to Glitterbomb, “many libertarians advocate [cryptocurrency] specifically along with the agorist tactic of avoiding taxes. The idea is that by not paying taxes one will ‘starve the state.’” And not only are, as Emmi Bevensee, Jahed Momand, and Frank Miroslav point out, “a handful of projects . . . now focusing on these innovations in stewardship from an Ostromian point of view, even going so far as adopting Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) wholly into the goals of their projects,” but there are numerous groups “working to build tools to enable cooperation across DAOs and protocols. All of them are ostensibly, in their outward-facing messaging and their daily practice, collectively governed projects that are trying to build open-source, freely available tools and components for cooperative economies to scale themselves on blockchains” [4]. DAOs can also be put toward funding broader community projects such as “Indigenous land back,” “BIPoC artist collectives,” community workshops, and free medical clinics. All of these factors together—workplace democracy, cryptocurrency, open-source code, etc.—make DAOs an ideal template from which to elaborate a cooperative agorism.

Admittedly, in large part because of their small scale in what Konkin calls the current “Low-Density Agorist Society” in the New Libertarian Manifesto, most agorists entrepreneurs already circumvent the capitalist business structure entirely. The independent carpenter working through Craigslist, the mom selling vegetables from her backyard garden to her neighbors, the basement cryptocurrency investor, and the ‘humanitarian’ entrepreneur smuggling needed medical supplies into countries in crisis are obviously already operating to some degree outside of anything like the wage labor economy. As such, one of Rothbard’s main critiques of agorism is that…

Konkin’s entire theory speaks only to the interests and concerns of the marginal classes who are self-employed. The great bulk of the people are full-time wage workers; they are people with steady jobs. Konkinism has nothing whatsoever to say to these people.

And while Konkin describes agorism as “profitable civil disobedience” and proclaims in the New Libertarian Manifesto that “[t]he fundamental principle of counter-economics is to trade risk for profit [emphases added],” Glitterbomb points out in her article “Toward an Agorist-Syndicalist Alliance” that “[e]ven Konkin couldn’t help but notice the exploitative nature of corporate hierarchy, believing it to be some of the lasting remains of feudalism and that if the individual were truly respected, bosses would slowly become a thing of the past.” Additionally, many of the practices that full under the term agorism like “alternative education programs, free schools or skill shares” are already inherently communitarian. The purpose of this piece then is not entirely to propose a new approach but to render an existing one more explicit. This is similar to what agorists are already doing by trying to transform existing counter-economic behavior into conscious agorist action. Broze explains how “[it] is important to distinguish counter-economic activity from full on Agorist activity,” and, as such, agorists like Jesse Baldwin insist “[w]e should practice the right to disregard the law, . . . but we have to do it in a way that is conscious rather than opportunistic.” But even further, we should seek to imbue agorism with cooperative principles as we work to raise the counter-economy up as explicitly agorist.

This is particularly important because of the attempt by anarcho-capitalists to co-opt agorism. This process is already underway, as the movement—despite Konkin’s explicit anti-capitalism—is continually branded with the black and yellow of anarcho-capitalism. Of course, there is nothing wrong with individual ancaps practicing agorism. Konkin openly admits in a 2002 interview that “[i]n theory, those calling themselves anarcho-capitalists do not differ drastically from agorists; both claim to want anarchy (statelessness, and we pretty much agree on the definition of the State as a monopoly of legitimized coercion, borrowed from Rand and reinforced by Rothbard).” However, “the moment we apply the ideology to the real world (as the Marxoids say, ‘Actually Existing Capitalism’) we diverge on several points immediately.” This applicational failure is a kind of vulgar libertarianism, where an actually free market is haphazardly and inconsistently conflated with capitalism, and the result is, as Konkin explains in the aforementioned interview, that “the ‘Anarcho-capitalists’ tend to conflate the Innovator (Entrepreneur) and Capitalist” and, furthermore, end up with no genuine theory of class and class struggle like agorists have. And it is these failures that lead pseudo-agorist ancaps to advocate neo-feudal projects like private cities and seasteading where private companies would rule over micronations in a real-world version of the city of Rapture from Bioshock or a throwback to the rule of India by the East India Company. These are rather extreme examples and it can be assumed that most ancaps practicing agorism are not attempting to build their own cities. But the truth is that ancaps like Rothbard, as Peter Sabatini argues, allow for “countless private states” and see “nothing at all wrong with the amassing of wealth, therefore those with more capital will inevitably have greater coercive force at their disposal.” And while folks like Anna Morgenstern and David Graeber make compelling cases that without the state nothing like wage labor could exist in a stateless society, as we—if Konkin’s theory of social change outlined in the New Libertarian Manifesto proves correct—move toward an agorist society of greater density and “the statists take notice of agorism,” it must be made clear that this is not meant to build a refuge for advocates of child labor and sweatshops from the minimal state protections for workers or to create some sort of anarchs-capitalist Panama Papers situation, but rather the beginnings of a new anti-capitalist, cooperative mode of production and exchange.

This cooperative agorism can be linked to the practice that Wesley Morgan (disapprovingly) calls “market syndicalism,” where anarchists look “to create ‘dual power’ through the creation of cooperatives.” Morgan asserts that “[w]hile these cooperatives are internally self-managing, they exist as units in a market economy, they still rely upon access to the market.” I will not go into a full rebuttal of Morgan’s point but rather point out the assumption that there is only one unified market—a claim that agorists contest. Certainly the formal, white market economy is riddled with statist privileges that render a lot of cooperative efforts sterile. Glitterbomb maintains, in “Bullshit Jobs and the End of Work (As We Know It),” that “to give worker cooperatives a real fighting chance, we have to abolish the web of state subsidies, occupational licensing, and corporatist regulations that all work together to limit market competition and disproportionately advantage capitalist business models.” But this presents the possibility that by avoiding restrictions of the capitalist economy, cooperatives in the counter-economy have an even greater chance of success. However, integral to this project is continued cooperative and syndicalist work within the unfree capitalist market—despite its restrictions—but with the ultimate goal of unifying it with the cooperative agorist projects. In “Toward an Agorist-Syndicalist Alliance,” Glitterbomb proposes that…

[w]hile agorists build alternatives to the white market within the black and grey markets, syndicalists could focus on challenging existing white market entities from the inside, eventually taking them over as Rothbard advocated. But it doesn’t have to stop there. Agorists should indeed advocate that syndicalists go even further. Once a white market business is successfully syndicalized, agorist-syndicalists should help transition the business into the agora. The newly collectivized business should eventually do what all good agorist businesses do: ignore state licensing regimes, refuse to pay taxes, engage in the use of alternative currencies, and generally disregard statist interference with their business dealings.

And if the goal is to generate an anti-capitalist, cooperative economy, the combination of cooperative agorism and agorist-syndicalism can be considered forms of venture communism, the scheme, as described by Glitterbomb in “Bullshit Jobs and the End of Work (As We Know It),” “which seeks to invest in cooperatives and outcompete capitalist firms” and ultimately use “worker cooperatives as a means to achieve communist outcomes via market means.” This communist end goal is twofold: Karl Marx explains that “[i]f co-operative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production – what else . . . would it be but communism, ‘possible’ communism?” But even when that “common plan” must necessarily be spontaneous and decentralized for Hayekian reasons, Carson asserts that removing barriers to production and allowing “free market competition in socializing progress,” as would be the case in the agora, “would result in a society resembling not the anarcho-capitalist vision of a world owned by the Koch brothers and Halliburton, so much as Marx’s vision of a communist society.”

1. A nuanced libertarian position on taxation can be found in my piece “An Anti-Statist Beginner’s Guide to (Taxation, Public Budgets, and) Participatory Budgeting.”
2. While Broze believes that vertical agorism does not qualify as counter-economics, Glitterbomb contends that “if these tactics directly challenge state and corporate power how are they not counter-economic?”
3. For critical opinions on blockchain and related technologies, see my pieces “NFTs Suck for Labor” and “Crypto Will Not Save Us From the Workplace.”
4. See Wikipedia for a diagram of the IAD framework.

Di David S. D’Amato. Originale pubblicato il 15 febbraio 2022 con il titolo Cheap Food Comes with a Big Price. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Cosa pensare di quei sedicenti “free-marketer” che vedono nel capitalismo globale una realizzazione dei loro valori? Visto il ruolo ingombrante e determinante della violenza di stato nella nascita del capitalismo globale, o si tratta di persone ignare dei fatti, e quindi farebbero meglio a tacere, oppure sono deliberatamente disonesti. Io propendo per la seconda ipotesi. Sul sito Econlib, di Liberty Fund, Pierre Desroches deplora “la crescente popolarità del movimento a favore dei prodotti alimentari locali”, che, dice, “è sostanzialmente una distruzione di ricchezza”. E poi:

Quei fautori di un sistema alimentare alternativo, che pensano che l’agroindustria non è più sostenibile, e che dicono che dovremmo cambiare radicalmente le nostre azioni, dovrebbero chiedersi: ma allora a cosa serve lo sforzo di così tante persone che lottano per sviluppare le catene alimentari globalizzate?

A certe condizioni, il ragionamento è plausibile: non ha senso coltivare, ad esempio, ananas in Nord Dakota, perché sarebbe enormemente inefficiente, richiederebbe troppa energia e danneggerebbe l’ambiente. Desroches però non tenta neanche di spiegare perché prodotti alimentari provenienti da migliaia di chilometri di distanza costano meno di quelli dell’azienda biodiversa locale. I fautori dell’agroindustria globale, con la corruzione mirata al furto di terra, le monocolture rigide e la distruzione di preziosi ecosistemi; con la criminalizzazione delle pratiche tradizionali fuori dai mercati aziendali globali; con il “furto delle conoscenze e delle biodiversità dei poveri”; con i suoi squadroni della morte che attaccano le popolazioni tribali, i contadini e la natura; dato tutto questo, dovrebbero chiedersi perché così tante persone lottano duramente, ancora oggi, contro un sistema neocoloniale cinicamente definito “libero mercato”, imposto e tenuto in piedi grazie all’appropriazione fisica di terre produttive, e all’appropriazione delle idee trasformate in proprietà intellettuale privata delle ricche aziende occidentali. Troppi “liberomercatisti” continuano a dire che la soluzione di tutti i problemi sta nell’economia; non nella sociologia, la politica o la storiografia. Ripetono continuamente espressioni come “specializzazione”, “vantaggio comparato” e “libero mercato” come se secoli di capitalismo, globale e non, fossero semplici pacifici fenomeni libertari. La situazione richiederebbe una diversa storia del capitalismo globale, una storia che condanni il capitalismo globale proprio perché rappresenta il culmine di generazioni di crimini contro la libertà individuale e il libero mercato. Nel mondo reale, a rendere l’olio di palma così a buon prezzo, ad esempio, sono gli incentivi concessi, per un ammontare di centinaia di miliardi, alle grandi industrie, danneggiando irreparabilmente persone e luoghi, alcuni dei quali rappresentano gli ecosistemi più complessi dell’unico pianeta che abbiamo.

Come dicono Pádraig Carmody e David Taylor a proposito del furto delle terre nel contesto africano, “In realtà l’accapparramento terriero rappresenta una riedizione approfondita delle disuguaglianze di potere sociospaziale proprie di epoche precedenti.” Il violento esproprio, con il sostegno dello stato, delle popolazioni del sud del mondo è una delle caratteristiche più peculiari dei processi associate alla globalizzazione capitalista. Fingere di non vederlo, fingere che i nostri alimenti costino poco grazie all’istituzione liberale del libero commercio è ridicolo. Ma, cosa importante, riconoscere questi fatti non significa “negare il vantaggio comparato” in principio, bensì affermare gli ideali libertari e riconoscere ciò che abbiamo di fronte. I sostenitori dei meccanismi di mercato e dei sani principi economici dovrebbero andare oltre la pura ripetizione del dogma secondo cui gli alimentari prodotti localmente sono più cari, senza chiedersi perché o senza tener conto di come viene violentato il libero mercato che sta alla base di questi prezzi bassi. I prezzi riflettono davvero le condizioni economiche? Oppure sono il risultato di un processo che incentiva l’agroindustria e priva i popoli colonizzati di ciò che è loro. Dire banalmente che far venire generi alimentari da lontano è meno costoso di per sé, in quanto inevitabile effetto della divisione del lavoro e del commercio, è il colmo della credulità. A voler credere che le persone formino le proprie opinioni onestamente e le promuovano in buona fede, dobbiamo concludere che tratto comune di chi confonde il capitalismo con la semplice libertà di scambio è una certa ingenuità.

Ammetto che per un occidentale bianco relativamente ricco sentir contestare l’opinione convenzionale è offensivo. Ma è anche doveroso ricordare a chi fa l’apologia del capitalismo che i sostenitori di un sistema alimentare locale, socialmente e ecologicamente sostenibile, non monopolizzato dai poteri aziendali collusi, sono decenni che meditano sulle catene alimentari globali. Gli economisti conoscono l’economia, ma spesso chiudono gli occhi davanti alla storia e la politica liquidandole come fattori distorsivi della legge della domanda e dell’offerta. Nessuna novità, ovviamente. Particolarmente perspicace, in questo contesto, Joshua King Ingalls, riformatore fondiario e libertario statunitense:

Non possiamo non riconoscere quanto siano appropriate le lezioni di laissez-faire di quei docenti e studiosi che provengono da istituzioni mantenute con pratiche che sono il diretto opposto. Nessuna meraviglia se queste istituzioni non invitano a investigare sulle questioni di politica industriale.

Se facciamo un’indagine onesta dei prezzi di ciò che mangiamo, noi del ricco Occidente non possiamo non sentire l’obbligo morale, sociale e politico di rendere la terra ai suoi legittimi proprietari: a chi l’ha lavorata per millenni prima che i colonizzatori gliela rubassero. Oltre vent’anni fa, nota Vandana Shiva, mentre un’alleanza tra stato e poteri aziendali poneva le basi del sistema socialmente e ambientalmente distruttivo che oggi governa il mondo, i nostri obblighi reciproci sono stati ridefiniti un crimine. La globalizzazione non solo si basa sulla chiara violazione di consolidati principi libertari, ma ha anche prodotto proprio quel genere di sistema autoritario che i libertari dicono di aborrire, un sistema che David Graeber definisce “burocratizzazione totale”. Molto accortamente Graeber definisce il capitalismo globale “la fusione graduale del potere statale e di quello privato in un’entità singola irta di regole e regolamenti, al solo scopo di estrarre ricchezza sotto forma di profitti.”

In alcuni tra i paesi più poveri e affamati del mondo, governi e aziende potenti collaborano da decenni per istituire mega aziende agricole i cui prodotti finiscono sulle tavole di altri paesi. Niente da obiettare se avvenisse in un legittimo libero mercato. Nell’attuale sistema violento, invece, dove le popolazioni indigene sono criminalizzate e tagliate fuori dai processi decisionali, il basso prezzo dei prodotti alimentari nasconde un prezzo reale molto più alto. Dunque i libertari devono essere necessariamente localisti sostenitori del ritorno alla terra? Non so. So però che l’attuale sistema alimentare globale deriva, più che dal vantaggio comparato, dal furto ai danni dei più deboli.

Jason Lee Byas. Artículo original publicado el 17 de febrero de 2022 con título Anarchy is Moral Order. Traducido al español por Camila Figueroa.

La anarquía es el orden moral

Como argumenté en mi post anterior, cualquiera que se preocupe por la moral necesita una buena respuesta al desafío amoralista planteado por alguien como Stirner. Como también dije allí, esto es especialmente cierto para aquellos moralistas que también son anarquistas, ya que una moral sin tal respuesta comienza a parecerse mucho a la dominación a la que el anarquismo se resiste.

Aquí subrayaré de nuevo que este desafío es especialmente apremiante para los anarquistas, y que esto se debe a que el anarquismo depende de la moral. Esto es cierto tanto como una cuestión conceptual, como una necesidad práctica para cualquier compromiso estable con el anarquismo.

Que el anarquismo dependa de la moralidad no establece los reclamos de la moralidad. Podría seguir siendo cierto que el desafío amoralista es inatacable. Esto sólo nos daría una razón para unirnos a la stirnerista Dora Marsden en el rechazo del anarquismo a favor de un “arquismo” auto-elevado, en el que “no hay más autoridad que uno mismo” y se busca extender esa autoridad sobre los demás cuando sea posible.

Pero para una discusión anarquista del egoísmo amoralista, creo que es importante tener en cuenta la contradicción.

Anarquía y moralidad: La conexión conceptual

¿Qué queremos decir con “anarquía” y “anarquismo”?

La anarquía es la cooperación sin poder.

Esto no significa la ausencia de competencia, no significa la ausencia de coordinación, y no significa la ausencia de reglas. Significa que estas cosas ocurren de una manera que no implica la subordinación de una persona a otra persona o grupo de personas.

Esta subordinación puede ocurrir a través de la agresión, en la que una persona inicia la fuerza contra otra. También puede ocurrir a través de la dominación, en la que formas menos directas de coerción hacen que una persona deba seguir sistemáticamente las órdenes de otra.

Una discusión completa sobre la agresión y la dominación necesitaría decir mucho más. No lo haré aquí. Sin embargo, señalaré un par de distinciones importantes que son necesarias para que estos rechazos de la agresión y la dominación tengan sentido.

En primer lugar, obsérvese que rechazar la agresión no excluye toda la fuerza. Descarta la iniciación de la fuerza. Pero definir qué es agresión y qué es defensa es un poco más complicado de lo que parece.

La forma más obvia de hacerlo es en los casos de derechos de propiedad. Para no salirnos por la tangente, vamos a plantear la cuestión en términos de algo que incluso los comunistas están de acuerdo en que se puede poseer: un cepillo de dientes.

Supongamos que yo quiero usar mi cepillo de dientes para cosas normales, pero Max quiere pintar con él. Los dos usos son incoherentes y, sin ningún otro incentivo, no consentiré que se utilice de ese modo.

Supongamos además que Max hace caso omiso de esto y coge mi cepillo de dientes con la intención de utilizarlo así. Le veo, le agarro del brazo y se lo quito de las manos.

“¡Ah! Dices que rechazas la agresión, pero aquí has iniciado la fuerza”, se queja Max. Esto puede parecer una tontería, pero ten en cuenta que aunque Max no me estaba tocando en ningún momento, sí que le agarré el brazo.

La razón por la que la queja de Max es engañosa es porque el cepillo de dientes era mío, yo tenía derecho a él. Por lo tanto, él agredió agarrando lo que era mío.

¿Pero qué clase de título es ese? No es sólo el título legal; seguramente ningún anarquista contaría como agresión recuperar una propiedad robada cuando el Estado avaló ese robo. Podemos ampliar este punto para decir que tampoco es un título socialmente reconocido, es una especie de título moral.

Probablemente se puede ver hacia dónde va esto. Antes de llegar allí explícitamente, consideremos una distinción similar necesaria al hablar de la dominación.

La dominación implica que alguien pueda dar órdenes a otra persona y que ésta se vea obligada a obedecerle. Es importante al hablar de dominación que lo que hay que obedecer es la persona, no un principio. Lo que importa es que la parte dominante ha ordenado algo, no las razones de esa orden.

Esta distinción es importante. Supongamos que las reglas de alguna asociación prohíben a Max intimidar a otros en ella. Supongamos además que esas mismas reglas son compartidas por la mayoría de las demás asociaciones, y que Max no puede encontrar un lugar seguro para dedicarse a intimidar a los demás. ¿Significa esto que Max está dominado, ya que el orden social le obliga a no intimidar a los demás?

No, el principio de no dominación es en sí mismo el motivo por el que se impide a Max acosar, no sólo porque la gente no quiera que sea un acosador. Se le obliga en nombre de las razones, no de las personas.

La cuestión es la siguiente: para dar sentido a un rechazo de la agresión, necesitamos una manera de distinguir la agresión de la mera fuerza, incluso cuando no es directamente contra nuestros cuerpos. Para dar sentido a un rechazo de la dominación, necesitamos una manera de distinguir la dominación de la mera compulsión social. En el primer caso, lo hacemos apelando al título moral. En el segundo, lo hacemos mediante una distinción entre personas y principios.

En ambos casos, la distinción necesaria se basa en conceptos morales.

Sin ninguna moral a la que podamos apelar, las distinciones se desvanecen, y los rechazos a la agresión y la dominación empiezan a carecer de sentido. Así, el “anarquismo” se convierte en una posición incoherente, y la anhelada “anarquía” en un estado de cosas imposible.

Anarquía y moral: La necesidad práctica

Tal vez el anarquista stirneriano pueda encontrar alguna forma de formular la idea de no agresión y no dominación sin apelar a afirmaciones morales. Esto haría de la anarquía una posibilidad conceptual sin moralidad, y así su anarquismo amoralista sería coherente.

O tal vez podrían reducir el anarquismo a una cierta actitud hacia las instituciones y los acuerdos sociales que rechaza los estados y cualquier otra cosa que los moralistas puedan considerar como “agresión” y “dominación”, incluso si el stirnerista rechaza la “agresión” o la “dominación” como descriptores de lo que se oponen. Si esto se pudiera explicar claramente, también podría ser una forma de hacer coherente el anarquismo sin la moral.

Soy escéptico. Sin embargo, en lugar de seguir litigando sobre este punto, subrayaré un segundo: la moralidad sigue siendo una necesidad práctica para que el anarquismo de cualquiera sea un compromiso estable.

No me refiero a esto en el sentido perezoso de “ah, pero ¿por qué querrías ser anarquista, en lugar de simplemente tratar de gobernar a otras personas?”. Hay innumerables buenas razones para que un egoísta amoralista prefiera la anarquía, especialmente teniendo en cuenta el análisis económico anarquista de mercado.

Quita la moralidad por completo. ¿Preferirías ser un dios-emperador en el mundo antiguo o, por ejemplo, un librero en la ciudad de Oklahoma de 2021?

Las ventajas de ser un dios-emperador son bastante obvias: puedes decidir casualmente tener pirámides o estatuas gigantes dedicadas a ti y a tus amigos, puedes hacer que se representen obras de teatro en el salón de tu casa todos los días y, en general, exigir cualquier cosa a cualquier persona que conozcas y que te la proporcionen. Todo lo que tienes que hacer es asegurarte de no ser derrocado por tus súbditos o conquistado por algún otro dios-emperador.

Pero un poco de reflexión te pondrá sólidamente en Oklahoma City 2021. Muchas enfermedades que podrían demostrar la mortalidad del dios-emperador no supondrían más que un fin de semana de hospitalización para el librero. Cualquier mensaje que el dios-emperador quiera enviar a otro dios-emperador del otro lado del mundo tardará en llegar, con poca certeza de que lo haga. Cualquier mensaje que el librero de Oklahoma City quiera enviar a su amigo en Japón tardará un segundo. Y las obras de teatro representadas para el dios-emperador probablemente no puedan competir con las películas de David Lynch, fácilmente disponibles en el teléfono del librero.

Es tentador responder: “De acuerdo, pero prefiero ser el dios-emperador y tener toda esa tecnología”, pero esto no tiene sentido. La explosión tecnológica que permitió todas esas cosas era institucionalmente incompatible con los dioses-emperadores. Sólo podía producirse en un entorno en el que los gobiernos redujeran su extracción y regulación lo suficiente como para que los procesos de mercado hicieran lo que han hecho.

Dado que los gobiernos todavía se dedican a prácticas de extracción y regulación que frenan la innovación, esto nos da una razón amoralista egoísta para preferir ser la persona media en una futura anarquía incluso a ser presidente de un estado liberal-democrático.

Y un egoísta amoralista maduro también reconocerá que la verdadera amistad requiere cierto nivel de igualdad: mucha gente adulará al dios-emperador por su favor, pero pocos simplemente disfrutarán de su compañía. Incluso para aquellos que lo hacen, el dios-emperador nunca puede estar demasiado seguro. Mucho antes de que la moral entre en escena, hay razones sólidas para rechazar el poder total.

Pero el verdadero problema viene cuando vemos que nuestra elección habitual no es entre el poder total y la libertad total. Por el contrario, generalmente se encuentra en los márgenes: un caso nuevo o intensificado de agresión o dominación frente a la ausencia de tal cambio o la eliminación (o suavización) de un caso de agresión.

Por supuesto, es cierto que el proteccionismo perjudica a las personas que viven bajo los gobiernos que lo practican. Pero eso no significa que las personas de las industrias protegidas no reciban beneficios a corto plazo. Si las consideraciones morales se bloquean categóricamente, mucha búsqueda de rentas parece perfectamente racional.

Y no me refiero sólo a cosas familiares como un arancel por aquí o una licencia profesional por allá. Escribiendo bajo el seudónimo de Tak Kak, el stirnerista James L. Walker defendió el asesinato de trabajadores inmigrantes chinos por parte de trabajadores blancos que temían una amenaza a sus ingresos.

Obviamente, el orden político y económico más amplio era un obstáculo mucho mayor para el sustento de esos trabajadores que los inmigrantes. De hecho, la inmigración en Estados Unidos beneficia económicamente a prácticamente todos los estadounidenses, incluidos esos trabajadores blancos.

Al profesar una forma de anarquismo individualista, Walker probablemente entendía todo eso. Pero la cuestión aquí no era sobre toda la inmigración en general, y “¡simplemente derrocar el orden político y económico existente!” no era una opción inmediata. El asesinato sí lo era.

Este es un ejemplo extremo, pero muchas tentaciones de agresión y dominación serán racionales al margen si se bloquean las consideraciones morales.

Prometer lealtad a la bandera negra

Dicho esto, también hay una solución fácil para mantener el compromiso del egoísta amoralista con el anarquismo: un apego personal a la visión anarquista. Con tal apego, los actos incompatibles con el anarquismo tendrán un sabor agrio, e incluso el egoísta amoralista aceptará pérdidas que sólo podrían evitarse mediante la agresión y la dominación.

Pero los apegos van y vienen. Cuando era niño, apoyaba a los Dallas Mavericks, ya que eran el equipo de la NBA más cercano a Oklahoma. Una vez que Oklahoma City tuvo un equipo de la NBA, mi apego a los Mavericks se desvaneció.

Para el egoísta amoralista, la anarquía no es una “idea fija”, sino que depende completamente de una apreciación arbitraria. Una vez que las posiciones de clase o los círculos sociales cambien, o tal vez sólo cuando el aburrimiento se instale, las razones morales no estarán ahí para evitar que el anarquismo siga el camino de los Mavericks.

Aquí el egoísta amoralista podría protestar: “Claro, pero mientras tanto, estoy comprometido con el anarquismo, y no veo que eso cambie pronto”.

En respuesta, sólo diré que creo que la mayoría de los anarquistas egoístas amoralistas se venden poco.

Estoy de acuerdo en que la mayoría de los stirneristas probablemente seguirán siendo anarquistas, y estoy de acuerdo en que la mayoría de ellos ni siquiera tendrán lapsos como el de Walker. Benjamin Tucker, también stirnerista, escribió furiosamente contra el “arquismo” de Marsden y la defensa del terror racial de Walker.

Al imaginarse perdiendo su apego al anarquismo, es probable que el stirnerista encuentre esa perspectiva horrorosa, o al menos muy lamentable. Esto es así aunque sus intereses, interpretados amoralmente, serían entonces diferentes después de tal cambio.

Creo que los stirneristas que esto bien describe ya tienen lo que es prácticamente necesario para un compromiso estable con el anarquismo. Pero esto se debe a que son moralistas. Instintivamente, se rebelan ante la idea de que el anarquismo es otro fantasma que les impide alcanzar su pleno potencial. Hay algo real que lo diferencia de su adhesión pasajera a un equipo deportivo.

Por supuesto, también tienen creencias explícitas en sentido contrario. Las personas somos complicadas, y no siempre somos conscientes de dónde están nuestras verdaderas lealtades. Es difícil leer a Benjamin Tucker sin pensar que se trata de una persona moralmente indignada por el Estado y sus crímenes, independientemente de cómo lo explique oficialmente.

Descubrir esas creencias más implícitas es un proceso de auto-honestidad: a la hora de la verdad, ¿puedes decir con seguridad que no sería peor para ti abandonar el anarquismo por alguna otra pasión política, si tu posición de clase o tus círculos sociales cambiaran de tal manera que este nuevo posicionamiento pudiera encajar mejor contigo? ¿Que nada se perdería si, arbitrariamente, te convirtieras en un maoísta o en un integralista o en un demócrata corriente o cualquier otra cosa, ya que ninguna perspectiva política es objetivamente mejor que otra?

Si hay un sentimiento persistente de que sí, esto sería un verdadero error, incluso si tal reposicionamiento fuera más fácil, puede haber algo en tu compromiso con el anarquismo que está atascado más profundamente que cualquier compromiso con los Dallas Mavericks. Tal vez sea porque se trata de una idea fija, que nubla tu percepción y te vuelve contra ti mismo. O tal vez sea, en cambio, un punto fijo en la naturaleza real de las cosas, una característica de la realidad moral a la que debes rendir cuentas.

Pero si mi último post es correcto, la diferencia entre esas dos posibilidades podría no ser tan importante.

Así que aquí es donde estamos: sin una solución al desafío amoralista, la moral es sólo otro sistema de dominación, y por lo tanto incompatible con el anarquismo. Sin embargo, un anarquismo amoralista tampoco es una opción, ni conceptual ni práctica. Por lo tanto, es necesario responder al desafío de Stirner para que la “anarquía” tenga algún sentido y el anarquismo sea algo más que un engaño pasajero.This is the template text that will be pasted at your cursor location.

I’ve admitted before and will admit again that “I am not particularly tech-savvy. I am a cheerleader for open-source, peer-to-peer, decentralized, appropriate, etc. technology, but, otherwise, I am only about as knowledgeable about this stuff as your average zoomer.” However, I have observed that with the rise of cryptocurrencies and blockchain there has emerged a line of thought asserting that these technologies offer an escape from the traditional capitalist workplace—particularly as it exists in the United States. This desire is understandable as said workplace is a hierarchical, authoritarian bureaucracy or, as Elizabeth Anderson puts it, a “private government” as centralized and undemocratic as a state communist regime. According to Anderson, “You are subject to private government whenever (1) you are subordinate to authorities who can order you around and sanction you for not complying over some domain of your life, and (2) the authorities treat it as none of your business, across a wide range of cases, what orders it issues or why it sanctions you.” And by this definition, the majority non-union, non-managerial, non-cooperative, and non-self-employed “workers in the United States are governed by communist dictatorships in their work lives” [1]. Not just this but Marxian exploitation theory holds that the relationship between employer and employee is defined by the extraction of surplus value from the latter in the form of profit. As Richard Wolff writes in Democracy at Work: A Cure For Capitalism, this…

is the excess of the value added by workers’ labor—and taken by the employer—over the value paid in wages to them. To pay a worker $10 per hour, an employer must receive more than $10 worth of extra output per hour to sell. Surplus is capitalists’ revenue net of direct input and labor costs to produce output.

These conditions drive many to desire to simply quit, a strategy that Anderson calls “exit” and which can be demonstrated in the general trend referred to as the Great Resignation; a snapshot of which can be found in the wildly popular subreddit r/antiwork.

As mentioned above, a tool being touted for this strategy—at least in some circles—is speculative instruments of blockchain such as cryptocurrencies—particularly Bitcoin as indisputably the most popular and lucrative with a market cap nearly double that of the runner up Ethereum—and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) [2]. And for some, crypto investing, trading, mining, and/or staking & lending does work. According to a poll done by Civic Science, 4% of people in the U.S. have or know someone who has quit their jobs because of gains made through investing in cryptocurrency, with two thirds of such respondents having a total income of less than $50,000 beforehand. From a less statistical perspective, there are also many headlines such as “This mom quit her job to focus on crypto full time and build ‘generational wealth.’ Now she makes around $80,000 per month” or “A nurse made his entire day’s wages trading crypto on his lunch break, so he quit his day job and now makes 7 figures” or “Millennials are quitting jobs to become crypto day traders. Here’s the risk, reward.” Small ‘movements’ have also begun to spring up on the Internet fostering the idea of this possibility. In particular,  r/CryptoCurrencyFIRE provides a space to share tips and insights on Financial Independence and Early Retirement through crypto trading. And if not being touted as a specifically anti-work tool, at the very least many crypto enthusiasts such as Kurt Ivy believe that blockchain technology will “decentralize established economic structures and return profits and power to the people.” So while crypto is not currently a central feature of the anti-wage-labor movement happening in the U.S. right now, it has the potential to become so. I would therefore like to preemptively dissuade people from this idea, at least in its current form detached from a broader theory and praxis of socio-economic change.

To begin, there are fairly well known critiques of crypto as being non-liberatory. For example, on Twitter, Kevin Carson writes out a succinct dialogue:

“If you don’t like being poor, do X.” 

“Is it possible for every single person to do X, and would it eliminate poverty?” 

“No…” 

“Then it’s not a systemic solution. It’s just a way for the lucky few who are first on board to beat an unfair system. Google ‘fallacy of composition.'”

By these standards, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fail to meet the criteria of a systemic solution to… basically anything. And of course, there are the extensive environmental concerns that blockchain technology continues to raise. But even further, the Bitcoin market in particular mirrors the asymmetry of the capitalist market, with Carson writing in his 2016 The Desktop Regulatory State that “over half of all Bitcoins are owned by one tenth of a percent of all Bitcoin accounts. And in June 2014 a single entity for the first time acquired 51% of total computing power used for mining Bitcoins for substantial periods of time.” Not much has changed in the last half-decade, with Khristopher J. Brooks accounting in 2021 that “the top 10,000 bitcoin investors,” representing “a mere 0.01% of all bitcoin holders[,] . . . control 27% of the digital currency.” And not only is the wealth disparity mirrored, but, despite the decentralist appeal of Bitcoin, there is a great deal of centralization of its market. As Michael Sheetz reports,​​ “A forensic study on bitcoin’s 2017 boom has found that nearly the entire rise of the digital currency at the time is attributable to ‘one large player,’ although the market manipulator remains unidentified. It’s possible that newer cryptocurrencies are more equitable in both ownership and power, but it is extremely difficult to tell how many individuals own multiple addresses (which denote identifiable cryptocurrency accounts) or how many addresses are owned by multiple people, and there has been no major public movement toward a more evenly distributed cryptocurrency. Not only this but Ed Zitron, drawing from an article by Parmy Olson, points out that because of its connection to centralized servers, “[y]our big, beautiful decentralized blockchain is powered by layer upon layer of regular, centralized web infrastructure.” And the reality of this situation is well known to big-time crypto evangelists. So when “they finally reach that point when they’re both right and rich, does it matter that their decentralized, egalitarian, meritocratic system was always as centralized, rigged and oligarchal (if not more so) as the system they escaped?” And as Carson elaborates, because “all the Bitcoin knockoffs” are “using the same blockchain architecture,” they “have the same problem as the original: they’re commodities, units of stored value, that trade on the market, appreciate in price, and thereby create an incentive for speculation and hoarding rather than exchange.” Finally, because Bitcoin is “created by a third party rather than by the very act of spending it, [so] it doesn’t solve the problem of liquidity for those who lack conventional money” 

This final aspect is also what differentiates Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from those alternative currency systems that historically and/or theoretically would allow people to create local, trust-based economies outside of the wage labor economy. Pre-dating the primacy of the wage labor economy, communities in 16th and 17th century England would, as David Graeber outlines in Debt: The First 5,000 Years, would often create their own money that was simply agreed upon for use or utilize what Carson identifies as a “mutual credit-clearing system,” wherein businesses “spend money into existence by incurring debits for the purchase of goods within the system, and then earning credits to offset the debits by selling their own services within the system. The currency functions as a sort of IOU by which a participant monetizes the value of her future production.” In the present day, there are hundreds of timebanks across the globe—a “system of bartering various services for one another using labor-time as a unit of account which was developed by various socialist thinkers based on the labor theory of value”—and many communities utilize LETS (Local Exchange Trading System)—“a locally initiated, democratically organised, not-for-profit community enterprise which provides a community information service and records transactions of members exchanging goods and services by using the currency of locally created LETS Credits.” Unlike cryptocurrencies, systems like LETS and timebanks can generate mediums of exchange within communities using community networks, and, as explained above, can be totally separate from not only the wage labor economy but also the cash nexus [3]. And as Carson argues, “Cheap open-source CNC machine tools, networked information and digital platforms, Permaculture and community gardens, alternative currencies and mutual credit systems, all reduce the scale of feasible production for many goods to the household, multiple household and neighborhood levels, and similarly reduce the capital outlays required for directly producing consumption needs to a scale within the means of such groupings [emphasis added].” This is a future free from the capitalist workplace; not an online stock market but a cooperative and flexible mode of production and exchange based around communities and households [4]. This type of economy does not need to rely on either wages from the private owners of the means of production or income from gambling with digital assets. 

This is not to say that cryptocurrency and blockchain have no place in anti-capitalist and anti-statist struggles. Rojava—the incredible libertarian socialist project being undertaken in Northern Syria—has considered using cryptocurrency to undercut the cost of the present monetary infrastructure and promote further decentralization of the economy; NGOs are using cryptocurrency to sidestep both the Taliban’s quasi-state as well international sanctions by several governments in order to help Afghans; and Logan Glitterbomb outlines how “many libertarians advocate [cryptocurrency] specifically along with the agorist tactic of avoiding taxes. The idea is that by not paying taxes one will ‘starve the state.’” Carson even allows that the centralized framework behind blockchain could be mitigated when “combined with a p2p architecture which frees it from dependence on a central server network” and that “blockchain might provide the accounting architecture to make a more just and egalitarian currency system more secure in its operations.” One particularly interesting thing to emerge from blockchain is the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization)—an “organization that [is] designed to be automated and decentralized.” It functions primarily “as a form of [cryptocurrency] venture capital fund based on open-source code and without a typical management structure or board of directors.” Despite being locked into many of the same problems of blockchain and cryptocurrency outlined above, this at least collectivizes the wealth generated through speculation. And a post on Comrade Cooperation accounts that…

[t]he switch from a 9–5 job to becoming a part of a DAO gave me an entirely new vision of work. 

Find meaning in what you do by working with like-minded people. Decide your own rules and work with each other, not for one another. Achieve goals.

Now, I have become the manager of my own work. I track hours on the tasks I complete. I review my peers’ work and we all vote on the next steps of the two big projects we are building. This allows us to keep everything transparent, and each member’s contribution is rewarded with a share of the profits. The system is fair, and all the rules and decision[s] we make are recorded on the Blockchain.

This sounds very much like the kind of prefigurative cooperative enterprise that could serve as a model for more substantially organizing production outside of the capitalist economy. Not only this, Emmi Bevensee, Jahed Momand, and Frank Miroslav also make the compelling case that DAOs present “windows for radicalism or at least harm reduction.” They outline how some of these organizations are “[b]uying back and repatriating stolen African art[,] . . . [f]unding Indigenous land back[,] . . .  [and] [s]upporting BIPoC artist collectives,” and a “handful of projects are now focusing on these innovations in stewardship from an Ostromian point of view, even going so far as adopting Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) wholly into the goals of their projects” [5]. Altogether, they conclude that “there’s a very strong undercurrent trying to push speculative finance toward sustainable public goods that most people can participate in and benefit from.” Perhaps then, if coupled with a long-term shift toward a decentralized, flexible, and cooperative mode of production—in addition to large-scale labor organizing—blockchain technology, in particular DAOs, may be a part of the strategy of the future. However, in its present form, [cryptocurrency (and blockchain in general)] lacks the necessary qualities of genuine decentralization, liquidity, community-building, etc. that will allow us to create a new economy separate from the regime of the boss. As such, crypto will not save us from the capitalist workplace.

1. This is not even to mention the phenomenon of bullshit jobs as described by David Graeber.
2. Read my critique of NFTs in my piece “NFTs Suck for Labor.”
3. For a survey of alternative currencies, see “6. Basic Infrastructures: Money, III. Examples of Networked Money Systems” in Carson’s The Desktop Regulatory State.
4. For a book-long study of this type of socio-economic and technological shift, see Carson’s “The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto.”
5. See Wikipedia for a diagram of the IAD framework.

For eight years, Russian state propaganda was always saying that Ukraine and its citizens were our enemies. By implying that all Ukrainians are neo-Nazis and pigs, common people of both countries got divided by the elites. I have some friends from Ukraine, mostly we share the same anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist views. And why the hell should we fight and hate each other? I only feel solidarity and warmth towards them, while the Russian state media and even people I know personally are trying to make me feel the opposite. 

It’s not only a problem with the propaganda of my own country. There is also Western propaganda trying to misinform common people; sometimes it is as provocative as Russian media. This is crazy. Everyone is trying to make people choose: you can have Western imperialism or Russian imperialism expanding its borders. And both options are awful. Why does anybody have to choose evil over evil? They are two geopolitical forces that are trying to control common people who suffer from the Russo-Ukrainian War. For these eight years, people from both sides of the conflict have been dying because Russia started its aggression by annexing the Crimean peninsula and intervening in the Donbas region. People are left with no choice. It is about two states that want to take care of the Donbas region, while the people who live there can’t be independent from any of the imperialist forces.

Before Putin’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk, almost everybody in Russia (and, as I saw, the international community was too) felt that such aggression would be the start of World War III. And after, we felt annihilated, humiliated even. All the people that opposed the war and Putin’s regime decisions lost hope immediately. Now we have it: political elites decided that we should continue this almost decade-long conflict by recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk as “independent” regions. And it is quite obvious that this is a step towards the further annexation of these territories by Russia. After the Crimean crisis and repressions against the opposition, they will have more possibilities to do that.

The elites even staged a spectacle to make their desires seem more legitimate—the meeting of the Security Council. They simply agreed together in advance what to decide, but what is more surprising is that some of them even needed some more. Director of Foreign Intelligence Sergey Naryshkin actually supported the entry of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to Russia but got mocked by Putin because he almost made their plans clear. It was the moment when the curtain almost fell.

The Russian regime will continue playing dirty. Quite possibly they will stage a “referendum” on the lands of Donbas. There was already one in the Donetsk region in 2014, but not even a Kremlin recognized the referendum results. At the time when this will be published, Russian forces will officially enter Donbas. And Moscow will try to set up the vote.* Just like the Crimean referendum of 2014. But who knows, maybe they will find another option and be even more “democratic” and “legit.” 

The consequences

I still remember how it went during the Crimean crisis. Me, a regular schoolboy, saw the prices for electronics and food go two times higher. I never knew what sanctions were until that moment. I was really surprised by the economic changes while every Russian was celebrating something supposedly patriotic and unifying. It was such a small victory over the Western world, and I didn’t understand why we should celebrate such changes. 

After the annexation of Crimea, militaristic and xenophobic attitudes increased within society. It was also the moment when Putin’s regime became stronger, letting the dictatorship live longer because of the national, imperialistic pride overlapping a people’s dissatisfaction with the deepening economic crisis and increasing inequality. And now the regime wants to try again to gain more public support, giving the people somewhat a compromise: maybe you hate us for all the internal problems, but we will let you at least be happy about another imperialistic “victory.” 

It’s very unlikely that the people would sell their dissatisfaction with daily life for war achievements. Life conditions got even worse after eight years, people got tired of eternally resigning Putin, his regime corruption and how the ruling class stopped caring about people’s demands. The public wants the money to flow into education and healthcare systems, but in past years the government was cutting them to give more billions to the army and police. For one sphere to make new missiles and the second to fund those who torture you inside police stations or beat you up at peaceful protests. 

This could be fairer if the oligarchs and officials paid for the ongoing war, but it is going to be us—common people, who sometimes can’t even afford basic needs just to continue living and not to survive. We are going to pay for another militarization, world isolation, and worsening economic crisis. We are going to pay for the restoration of the destroyed infrastructure in the Donbas region. And no doubt we are not going to benefit from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions recognition or further annexation. 

Right now, we should all be aware of the Kremlin’s aggression. Putin’s dictatorship has no limits, the ruling class don’t mind about dead civilians or people beyond them. Everything can happen these days, but nothing positive. And these years will be difficult. As a people we should take care of each other, as a global community and especially as anarchists we can’t ignore what is going on. Solidarity is the weapon of the people, and it is stronger than any tank or missile. Against all borders, against all empires, against all wars! Do not be silent. Take action.

Oleh: Charles Johnson. Teks aslinya berjudul “Benjamin Tucker on Anarcho-Capitalism” dan diterbitkan di Rad Geek People’s Daily, pada 1 Desember 2007. Teks ini diterbitkan ulang di C4SS lalu diterjemahkan ke dalam Bahasa Indonesia oleh Iman Amirullah

Sebenarnya,

Jelas Benjamin Tucker tidak memiliki pendapat langsung mengenai “anarko kapitalisme”, karena istilah tersebut tidak diciptakan bertahun-tahun setelah kematiannya, dan beberapa dekade setelah ia pensiun dari politik radikal. Tapi Tucker memiliki banyak karya yang membahas hubungan antara anarkisme, sosialisme, dan kapitalisme, dan itu mungkin menarik untuk dipelajari.

Pertanyaan ini menarik sebagai keingintahuan sejarah dan juga mampu menjelaskan argumen lama yang selalu menimbulkan perdebatan. Terdapat beberapa grup anarkis anti-kapitalis — kebanyakan dari mereka adalah anarkis komunis atau kolektivis — yang memunculkan perdebatan ketika orang-orang pro-kapitalis yang anti negara seperti Murray Rothbard atau David Friedman mendeskripsikan diri mereka sebagai “anarko kapitalis” atau mengidentikasikan posisi politik mereka sebagai anarkis, atau mengidentifikasikan anarko kapitalisme sebagai saudara dekat dari anarkisme individualis pasar bebas ala Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Victor Yarros, dll. Pemantik utama ketegangan dalam perdebatan ini adalah tentu saja Bagian F dan Bagian G dari Anarchist FAQ “anarkis sosial”; namun jika bukan itu, pasti Anda sudah sering menyaksikannya dikutip berulang kali. Pada titik ini akan muncul perdebatan sengit tentang apakah anarko-kapitalisme adalah bentuk asli dari anarkisme, atau bentuk anti-statisme sayap kanan yang tidak terkait yang secara tidak tepat dianggap sebagai anarkisme. Perdebatan sering berfokus pada gagasan tentang tradisi anarkis, dan argumen berpindah ke pertanyaan (1) apakah posisi pro-kapitalis sesuai atau tidak sesuai dengan elemen esensial dan berkelanjutan dari tradisi itu; dan (2) apakah anarko-kapitalisme adalah bagian yang “sah” dari tradisi anarkis atau ideologi asing yang independen dan pada dasarnya hanya mengambil beberapa terminologi dan beberapa slogan dari anarkisme tradisional. Dan di sinilah para anarkis individualis terseret ke dalam pertarungan panjang.

Para anarkis sosial dan anarko kapitalis menghabiskan banyak waktu untuk bertengkar satu sama lain tentang klaim siapa penerus sah dari para anarkis individualis akhir abad 19 sampai awal abad 20. Para anarko kapitalis menunjukan penekanan besar yang dilakukan oleh lingkar liberty¹ pada pasar bebas, persaingan bebas, kepemilikan pribadi, dan penentangan terhadap komunisme. Sedangkan para anarkis sosial menunjukan bahwa Benjamin Tucker dkk mengidentifikasi diri mereka sebagai “sosialis,” serangan tanpa henti mereka terhadap para kapitalis dan tuan tanah, identifikasi mereka dengan bentuk-bentuk militansi buruh tanpa kekerasan, dan analisis mereka tentang bunga pinjaman, sewa atas tanah, keuntungan dari menyewakan modal, dll. sebagai hasil dari hak-hak istimewa yang dibuat oleh negara untuk kelas-kelas pemilik modal. Saya tidak ingin terlibat lebih dalam lagi pada penafsiran perdebatan ini; Saya telah membahas beberapa kesulitan semantik yang terlibat di tempat lain (1, 2, 3, dll.), dan Roderick memiliki beberapa tulisan bagus tentang hal tersebut di Austro-Athenian Empire (2007-04-01): Against Anarchist Apartheid dan yang lebih baru, Austro-Athenian Empire (2007-11-11): Voltairine de Cleyre, Anarcho-capitalist? Untuk saat ini, cukuplah untuk mengatakan bahwa kedua sisi argumen sebagiannya benar, dan sebagiannya lagi salah; banyak anarko-kapitalis yang sangat selektif, dan secara substansial mendistorsi individualis untuk mengaburkan atau mengabaikan penekanan-penekanan sosialistik dari pemahaman individualis tentang kelas, hak istimewa, dan eksploitasi. Tetapi kaum anarkis sosial juga telah mengurangi banyak poin penting dalam menjelaskan posisi individualis, yang sebagian besar berfungsi untuk membuat Tucker, Spooner, Yarros, de Cleyre, dll. tampak jauh lebih monolitik daripada yang sebenarnya, dan membuat mereka tampak jauh lebih sedikit propertarian², dan lebih ramah terhadap sosialisme kolektivistik dan komunistik, daripada yang sebenarnya. Sementara itu, rekonstruksi teori anarko-kapitalis oleh kaum anarkis sosial sangat tidak jelas, dan justru tidak berhubungan dengan versi-versi anarko-kapitalisme yang dianut oleh tokoh-tokoh sentral penggagasnya seperti Karl Hess dan Murray Rothbard pada periode Left and Right dan Libertarian Forum, terus terang mereka harusnya malu untuk menunjukkan hasil analisis mereka di depan umum.

Dalam kasus lainnya, Karena saya merupakan seorang anarkis individualis, dan bukan anarko-kapitalis ataupun anarkis sosial, saya tidak memiliki ketertarikan langsung dalam perdebatan ini, kecuali sejauh itu akan sedikit melelahkan menyaksikan pertengkaran antara dua kecenderungan individualis dalam gerakan seolah-olah mereka berdebat tentang isi wasiat nenek mereka yang sudah meninggal. Kita masih sangat membutuhkan para anarko kapitalis dan anarkis sosial untuk menjadi pembicara utama kita. Tetapi mengesampingkan sebagian besar argumen eksegetis, ada beberapa klaim yang secara rutin dibuat oleh kaum anarkis sosial tentang “tradisi anarkis” yang perlu dicermati lebih lanjut.

Pertama, kaum anarkis sosial mengklaim bahwa posisi tanpa pemerintah diperlukan tetapi tidaklah cukup untuk anarkisme sejati; kedua, mereka mengklaim bahwa kaum anarkis tradisional telah memahami anarkisme untuk menuntut tidak hanya pembubaran Negara saja, tetapi juga penentangan terhadap kapitalisme, dalam beberapa pengertian yang cukup kuat, dan bahwa posisi anti-kapitalis sama pentingnya bagi semua anarkisme tradisional yang asli seperti halnya posisi anti-negara. Begitu banyak cerita yang sudah ditulis untuk menunjukkan fakta bahwa Benjamin Tucker memang menyebut dirinya seorang sosialis yang anarkistik, bahwa kaum individualis memang percaya pekerja berupah dieksploitasi secara sistemik oleh majikan mereka, bahwa mereka mendukung penghuni liar (squatters) atas tuan tanah, dan bahwa dominasi ekonomi kapitalis, tuan tanah, dan baron uang di pasar adalah hasil dari hak istimewa yang diberikan pemerintah, yang akan runtuh di pasar yang benar-benar bebas. (Sebenarnya sama sekali tidak jelas bagi saya bagaimana posisi ini seharusnya secara radikal berbeda dari posisi Karl Hess, atau posisi Rothbard dalam Penyitaan dan Prinsip Kemandirian. Tapi terserahlah.) Memang benar bahwa Tucker dan rekan-rekannya menganggap diri mereka sebagai sosialis serta individualis disaat yang bersamaan, dan bahwa mereka menganggap sosialisme mereka sangat penting untuk posisi mereka. Tapi apakah para anarkis tradisional ini benar-benar setuju dengan klaim interpretatif anarkis sosial kontemporer tentang arti istilah anarkisme, atau fitur esensial dari tradisi anarkis?

Roderick Long baru saja menulis tentang sikap Voltairine de Cleyre selama fase anarkis individualis awalnya. (De Cleyre kemudian mengubah posisinya dengan cara yang dia sebut sebagai penolakan terhadap anarkisme individualis, dan yang sering diklaim oleh para anarkis sosial sebagai konversi ke anarko-komunisme. Tetapi kenyataannya, posisinya kemudian lebih merupakan panarki ekonomi, dimana komunitas individualis dan komunis dapat hidup berdampingan.) Sekarang Tucker, di kolom yang pertama kali dia tulis untuk Liberty pada tahun 1890, dan kemudian dicetak ulang sebagai Instead of a Book. Tucker menanggapi upaya eksplisit untuk memberikan definisi sosialisme dan anarkisme dalam publikasi radikal milik Hugh Pentecost, The Twentieth Century. Kalimat yang ditandai dengan huruf tebal merupakan tambahan dariku.

Ambil  definisi Twentieth Century lainnya, — tentang Anarkisme. Saya tidak memiliki edisi dari makalah yang diberikan, dan tidak dapat mengutipnya dengan tepat. Tapi itu tentu saja membuat kepercayaan pada kerjasama (Co-operation) menjadi bagian penting dari Anarkisme. Ini sama kelirunya dengan definisi Sosialisme. Kerjasama tidak lebih penting bagi Anarkisme dibandingkan kekuasaan bagi Sosialisme. Fakta bahwa mayoritas Anarkis percaya pada kerjasama bukanlah apa yang membuat mereka menjadi Anarkis, seperti halnya fakta bahwa mayoritas Sosialis percaya pada kekuasaan bukanlah apa yang membuat mereka menjadi Sosialis. Sosialisme bukan untuk atau menentang kebebasan; Anarkisme adalah untuk kebebasan, dan bukan untuk atau melawan hal lain. Anarki adalah ibu dari kerjasama, — ya, sama seperti kebebasan adalah ibu dari ketertiban; tetapi, sebagai masalah definisi, kebebasan bukanlah ketertiban dan juga bukan kerja sama Anarkisme.

Saya mendefinisikan Anarkisme sebagai kepercayaan pada jumlah kebebasan terbesar yang sesuai dengan kesetaraan kebebasan; atau, dengan kata lain, sebagai kepercayaan pada setiap kebebasan kecuali kebebasan untuk menyakiti.

Dapat diamati bahwa, menurut definisi dari Twentieth Century, Sosialisme mengecualikan Anarkis, sementara, menurut definisi dari Liberty, seorang Sosialis mungkin iya atau mungkin bukan seorang Anarkis, dan seorang Anarkis mungkin iya atau mungkin bukan seorang Sosialis. Melonggarkan ketepatan ilmiah, dapat dikatakan, secara singkat dan luas, bahwa Sosialisme adalah pertempuran dengan kekayaan dan Anarkisme adalah pertempuran dengan otoritas. Kedua angkatan bersenjata — Sosialisme dan Anarkisme — bukanlah koekstensif atau eksklusif; tapi mereka tumpang tindih. Sayap kanan yang satu adalah sayap kiri yang lain. Kebajikan dan superioritas Sosialis Anarkis — atau Anarkis Sosialis, begitu dia lebih suka menyebut dirinya sendiri — terletak pada kenyataan bahwa dia bertarung di sayap yang sama bagi keduanya. Tentu saja ada perasaan di mana setiap Anarkis dapat dikatakan sebagai Sosialis secara virtual, sejauh kekayaan bergantung pada otoritas, dan menghancurkan yang terakhir berarti menghancurkan yang pertama. Tetapi tampaknya hampir tidak tepat untuk memberikan nama Sosialis kepada seseorang yang secara tidak sadar, tidak menginginkan, tidak bermaksud, atau mengetahuinya. — Benjamin Tucker, Armies that Overlap, Instead of a Book. ¶¶ 10–12.

Tucker terkenal sangat ketat dalam menerapkan istilah “anarkis” — ia berpendapat bahwa komunis anti-statis seperti Johann Most atau para martir Haymarket sebenarnya bukanlah anarkis, tetapi hanya pemerintah dari kelompok yang berbeda yang secara sembrono mengklaim istilah tersebut dari para pendukung properti individu dan pasar bebas. Jadi ini sangat menarik untuk mencatatnya disini, saat Tucker menempatkan dirinya dalam tenda sosialis, dia secara eksplisit bersedia memberikan nama “anarkis” kepada mereka yang menentang negara bahkan jika mereka menolak sosialisme dan menerima atau mendukung “penghisapan” kapitalistik; tampaknya Tucker akan menerima anarko-kapitalisme, tetapi tidak banyak bentuk anarkisme sosial, sebagai anarkis yang sejati. Jika para individualis abad ke-19 yang memisahkan domba dari kambing, alih-alih memiliki sekelompok anarkis sosial zaman akhir yang diduga melakukannya atas nama mereka dan menyelamatkan mereka dari skema jahat ancap, maka Anda akan mendapatkan barisan yang sangat berbeda untuk tradisi anarkis; dari dua Murray, Rothbard mungkin akan masuk, dan Bookchin mungkin akan keluar.

Nah, itu hasil yang menarik. Bukan karena fakta bahwa Tucker pasti benar tentang ini; hanya karena Tucker menggunakan kata satu arah tidak berarti semua orang pernah melakukannya, atau setiap orang harus melakukannya sekarang. Lagi pula, saya tidak punya masalah dengan menyebut Most atau Albert Parsons atau Kropotkin sebagai seorang anarkis, meskipun saya berpikir bahwa ada poin-poin penting di mana Tucker benar dan mereka semua salah. Tapi saya pikir itu penting, jika Anda akan pergi ke tradisi anarkis, untuk memastikan bahwa klaim yang Anda buat tentang kontinuitas dan fitur penting didukung oleh bagaimanaanarkis tradisional melihat diri mereka sendiri, dan bukan hanya proyeksi prioritas Anda sendiri dan ide-ide Anda sendiri tentang apa yang penting bagi para pendahulu Anda. Mengingat apa yang Tucker, misalnya, katakan tentang apa yang dia pahami tentang arti anarkisme, dan siapa yang akan atau tidak dia kenali sebagai sesama anarkis, saya tidak berpikir bahwa polemik anarkis sosial telah melakukan pekerjaan yang sangat baik untuk itu, sejauh menyangkut para individualis Liberty.

1 Liberty merupakan publikasi periodikal tentang ide-ide anarkisme pasar bebas dan sosialisme libertarian yang diinisiasi oleh Benjamin Tucker dan beroperasi pada 1881 hingga 1908.

2 Propertarianisme, atau proprietarianisme, adalah filosofi politik yang mereduksi semua pertanyaan etika menjadi hak untuk memiliki properti.

Last week, The Gay Times reported that—based on “a leaked letter sent on 20 February to Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations’ (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights”—U.S. officials claim there is an official Russian list of “‘journalists, activists and gay rights advocates’ to punish in the event it invades Ukraine.” Would this be in line with the Russian state’s past and ongoing behavior? Absolutely. Under Vladimir Putin, both same-sex marriage and adoption by trans people were made illegal by constitutional amendment. The government has also cracked down on free expression of the LGBTQIA+ community and its allies, with school teachers in St. Petersburg instructed to surveil student social media for LGBTQIA+ symbols, and the government passing its notorious “gay propaganda law,” which, as Miriam Elder explains, “makes it illegal to equate straight and gay relationships, as well as the distribution of material on gay rights. It introduces fines for individuals and media groups found guilty of breaking the law, as well as special fines for foreigners.” But violence against and repression of queer folks is perpetuated by governments across the globe everyday and the U.S. government does essentially nothing. Take, for example, the United States’ ally Saudi Arabia, where—though not strictly enforced—homosexuality is punishable by death. Or even look at the U.S. itself, where last year “officially surpassed 2015 as the worst year for anti-LGBTQ legislation in recent history, according to updated tracking and analysis by the Human Rights Campaign” and, in just the first week of 2022, 7 states proposed anti-trans bills. So what is the explanation for the difference in reaction to the Russian government’s list? It helps serve the U.S. empire in propagandizing liberals and progressives into supporting potential future intervention in Ukraine. This is an important tool for the U.S. government to deploy early on since Putin has officially invaded the Ukraine, Biden has put sanctions on Russia and moved more troops into Eastern Europe (though not Ukraine itself), and Ukraine has had their European Union application approved. As such, a conflict between the two superpowers is, regardless of Biden’s current promises, a distinct possibility. 

This is almost identifical to the tactic of co-opting western feminist discourse to help justify incursions into the Middle East. Jyhene Kebsi points to one “lie utilized by the Bush administration” to defend the U.S. invasion of Iraq “that did not receive the same attention” as those about WMDs “in the media: the so-called empowerment of Iraqi women.” This helped serve as a “pretext for American ‘humanitarian imperialism’ after the ‘weapons of mass destruction in Iraq’ argument was losing steam.” Kebsi gestures, for example, to then Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky deflecting criticism of the war by stating, “We are working to advance the interests of Iraqi women in every area, from human rights to political and economic participation to health care and education” as well as an entire “campaign called ‘W Stands for Women’ . . . launched to present the imperial war on Iraq as an attempt to ‘save and support’ Iraqi women. This campaign reinforced a logic of ‘compassionate patriarchy’ through which the masculinized state protected the feminized vulnerable populations.” Kebsi observe how this campaign was supported by numerous “American liberal feminists” and, as such, “[s]everal white liberal American feminists misrepresented the Iraq war as a mission to ‘help’ Iraqi women, coupled with support towards Bush’s use of feminist rhetoric to make the empowerment of Iraqi and Afghan women an issue of national security.” 

Explicitly utilizing this tactic in the context of Afghanistan is actually a matter of public record through a CIA analysis available through Wikileaks that outlines a PR strategy of emphasizing women’s rights issues to the French and German public to ensure continued support for the International Security Assistance Force mission from those countries. The document outlines how…

Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission.

And a similar strategy continued into the latest section of the War on Terror, which focused on ISIS/ISIL in particular. Rania Khalek details the emphasis by US officials and mainstream media outlets on sexual violence as a primary reason for militarily opposing ISIS—despite similar violence perpetuated by “the governments of the nations the US has appointed to spearhead its anti-ISIS coalition . . . namely, the Iraqi, Egyptian and Saudi regimes”—and how the “US corporate media outlets have acted as cheerleaders and stenographers, allowing the US government to hijack the deterioration of women’s rights as a selling point for perpetual war.” And so even as 90% of drone-strikes everywhere from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Yemen to Somalia kill non-targets, then US Ambassador-At-Large for Global Women’s Issues Catherine Russell proclaimed, “These are women and girls who pleaded to be killed in airstrikes rather than be brutalized by ISIL.”

As must be obvious, the co-option of feminism and gay rights rhetoric to encourage non-criticism of or even open support for warfare in the Middle East is nearly identical to the strategy behind this leaked info about a Russian governmental hit list of Ukrainian LGBTQIA+ activists. But further, not just as feminism but LGBTQIA+ activism as well has been used before as a means of justifying military intervention. Even as groups like Gay Liberation Network (formerly Chicago Anti-Bashing Network)—much like the feminist Code Pink—organized against the Iraq War, Mubarak Dahir felt the need to call out pro-war LGBTQIA+ folks and allies in the popular queer Chicagoan publication Windy City Times. He implores that “gay and lesbian people who endorse the war in and occupation of Iraq—and possible future military action against other countries like Syria—need to stop using the guise of caring about the plight of gay Arabs to rationalize their support” and that “it’s easy to see why advocates of war who are speaking to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities would invoke the freedom of GLBT peoples in trying to win over their audience. . . [b]ut we shouldn’t fall for that kind of insincere play on our emotions.” This can be broadly related to the concept of ‘homonationalism’—a term originating with Jasbir K. Puar—which describes a trend and/or strategy that involves downplaying homophobia and transphobia in ‘Western’ countries and representing them as fundamentally pro-LGBTQIA+ (because of their supposed progressivism and egalitarianism) in comparison to the supposedly homogeneously homophobic and transphobic ‘non-West’ in order to—in the case of the U.S.—justify American Exceptionalism and continued intervention in the Middle East and, now, potentially against ‘Eastern’ Russia.

Whether or not the leak about the list itself was intentional, at the very least its purpose in being sent to the UN is to secure their approval for military action and now that it is public it will almost certainly be used to push liberals and progressives to support any potential escalation in U.S. interference in Ukraine. Which is not to say that the very real fears of the Ukrainian LGBTQIA+ community and its allies are illegitimate. The Russian state does in fact pose a significant threat to the freedom and safety of sexual and gender minorities both in Ukraine and, obviously, within Russia itself. Nor is this to say that Putin’s actions are in any way legitimated or lessened in their cruelty and violence simply because the U.S. government is utilizing propaganda. As Autonomous Action states: “We have no illusions about the Ukrainian state, but it is clear to us that it is not the main aggressor in this story—this is not a confrontation between two equal evils. First of all, this is an attempt by the Russian authoritarian government to solve its internal problems through a ‘small victorious war and the accumulation of lands’ [a reference to Ivan III].” We—as in the residents of the U.S., not the government—should therefore support the self-defense of the Ukrainian people and the anti-war resistance of the Russian people—particularly their grassroots efforts. But none of these reasons are why the United States is beginning to get involved. The U.S. empire is a dying one and Putin hopes to see Russia made into the dominant global superpower by extending its hand into Europe. Not only this but conflict with Russia would mean major stoppages in their oil supply chains to Europe, opening the path for the U.S. government to utilize its anti-Indigenous pipeline infrastructure to gain economic leverage. And of course a war with Russia means a massive uptick in stocks from U.S. arms manufacturers. The reasons extend on and on, but with little to none of them having anything to do with protecting the LGBTQIA+ community in Ukraine. Stop the charade. Don’t use our community to justify U.S. interventionism.

Critical Comment on Social Credit

I studied your article in “New Democracy” carefully and liked some things you said in it. Some things annoyed me tho. You speak of certain demands on the government. This surprises me. In my estimation, no one who understands liberty demands from government. For example, suppose we demand justice from it. How can government confer justice when by its very nature, being based on injustice, it has no justice to give? Can government confer a “Just Price” or do all the wonderful things demanded of it in these depressing days? You do not demand free speech from government, you exercise your rights to it whether the government wants you to or not. Those who, like the “Herald of Cooperation”, which by the way has some fine articles in it, talk of liberty and government as nearly synonymous simply do not know what they are talking about. I am not talking as an academition of the anarchist school but as a pure matter of fact. While an anarchist does not necessarily expect to abolish government overnight, he purely must be interested in what direction things are going. And to expect anything from conniving nitwits in Washington or even imply that they have the ability to ameliorate the very thing they have caused seems to be the essence of credulity. Government is, by the nature of the arbitrary decrees it is permitted to enact, impotent. It is an institution that the ignorance of people protects from its folly, inefficiency, and fraud. It does not have to pay like a freely competitive institution, directly or immediately for these because it can command patronage. Therefore it is a curse upon the people under its control. “There is nothing that a government does for the people that they could not do for themselves if there were no government.” Viewed in this light any cooperation with it that does not consist in diminishing its power is pernicious. . . .

Some men seem to think that the expression “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” means to watch the government. It is like saying: Put a tiger in the nursery but watch the tiger. If one-tenth of the effort necessary to do this was put to kicking the tiger out of the nursery it would be inestimably more effective and intelligent. Government, the tiger, is impotent for good.

Extracts from Labadie

One of my objections to any form of governmental banking is that the process of putting it over politically is expensive and slow while mutual bank of issue can be put into existence immediately by those who subscribe to its idea and I predict that if several are inaugurated their advantages will be so manifest that subscribers will come to them and in this way we will put the interest-taking variety out of existence by the simple process of beating them in a competitive field. But this cannot be done as long as many people still have faith in the king thing as being a means for their salvation… Now as to your subscribing to Social Credit. I have been cataloging my father’s correspondence of the last 40 to 50 years. If you could see the many unfulfilled hopes contended . . free silver, single tax, municipal ownership, socialism, and whatnot, many of them subscribed to by libertarians and near-anarchists, AND NEARLY ALL ADHERED TO WITH THE VERY SAME REASON YOU GIVE FOR SUBSCRIBING TO SOCIAL CREDIT (that it is something better anyway), you might conclude that we cannot expect much anyway and that if they had not been sidetracked by false ideas of expediency and had stuck to the real thing all along we might have been a lot farther on than we are today… Jo’s statement that she is not particularly interested in economic material in a clear and understandable manner, to make it interesting and to show ITS IMMEDIATE AND IMPORTANT EFFECTS ON THE BEARING OF NEARLY EVERY DETAIL OF OUR LIVES. One would not ordinarily think of any connection between a money system and love, for example, but you know John that a woman’s “right” to love freely, that is to love the object of her heart’s desire, isn’t worth much unless she is economically independent of men. Even to be economically dependent on the one one loves isn’t quite congenial to a love undefiled by mercenary feelings… There is a grim and sardonic humor in the fact that in the long run people get just [what] they deserve. Marxians say that people think the way they do because of economic conditions. Idealists say that people have these conditions because of the way they think. And this futile and useless argument goes on and on. I am inclined to think that thought is the thing that makes progress. But conditions do not necessarily make people think [1] . It may make some think, but not many. Masses don’t think. If they did we would not be where we are today. This is why I do not believe in mass movements.

1. “Thing” seemingly mistakenly written as “think.”

Commentary – Eric Fleischmann

Published as two separate but related pieces in 1934 by John G. Scott and Jo Ann Wheeler (the Jo and John mentioned in the above piece) in the second anarchist periodical with the name Mother Earth and preserved in the Joseph A. Labadie Collection of the University of Michigan Library, the identity of the contributor to New Democracy that Labadie is writing to in this newest part of the Laurance Labadie Archival Project is not completely clear—though it appears to be Scott. However, the strategy of Social Credit that said author apparently wrote of is identifiable, with Kevin Carson describing it as “a proposal to remedy corporate capitalism’s chronic tendency toward overinvestment and overproduction by periodically depositing a sum of interest-free new money, equivalent in aggregate to the demand shortfall, in the citizenry’s bank accounts.” And so Labadie uses this space to–among other things such as his usual focus on money—broach the topic of how to approach utilizing government for anarchistic purposes. Of course, Labadie, as an anarchist, believes in ending all government, but he brings up the point that “an anarchist does not necessarily expect to abolish government overnight and that there can be “cooperation with it” as long as it consists of “diminishing its power.” But at the same time he points out that if earlier anarchists and libertarian socialists “had not been sidetracked by false ideas of expediency and had stuck to the real thing all along we might have been a lot farther on than we are today.”

For Labadie’s intellectual ancestor Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a (failed) run for the French Constituent Assembly in 1848, a subsequent (successful) run in the complementary elections, and an attempt to establish an interest-free Bank of the People through taxes levied on the rich made perfect sense to reduce the power of both the state and capitalists and increase the power of workers. And while Labadie—still an opponent of interest—is opposed to “any form of governmental banking” and very pessimistic toward any appeals to state power, this mutualist reformism has been inherited by some of Labadie’s intellectual descendents like Carson, who argues that anarchist “involvement in politics should take the form of pressure groups and lobbying, to subject the state to as much pressure as possible from the outside” and speaks highly of decentralist and democratic but still governmental strategies like open-source governance and participatory budgeting and advocates  a land value tax (“single tax”) “as a transitional measure.” These resemble the “free silver, single tax, municipal ownership, socialism, and whatnot” written of by the elder Labadie and his contemporaries in their content as well that they are “something better anyway” and moving in an anti-statist “direction.”

What arises from thinking such as this is a question of what model of state power reduction is one operating under. Murray Rothbard, for example, argues that the state “abolitionist is a ‘button pusher’ who would blister his thumb pushing a button that would abolish the State immediately, if such a button existed.” Therefore, “[t]he radical — whether he be anarchist or laissez-faire — cannot think in such terms as, e.g., ‘Well, the first year, we’ll cut the income tax by 2 percent, abolish the ICC, and cut the minimum wage; the second year we’ll abolish the minimum wage, cut the income tax by another 2 percent, and reduce welfare payments by 3 percent, etc.’ The radical cannot think in such terms, because the radical regards the State as our mortal enemy, which must be hacked away at wherever and whenever we can.” In contrast, many libertarians on the left utilize Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s theory of dialectical libertarianism, which holds that one should “grasp the nature of a part by viewing it systemically–that is, as an extension of the system within which it is embedded.” For Carson, this analysis means “that [because] the corporate economy is so closely bound up with the power of the state, . . . it makes more sense to think of the corporate ruling class as a component of the state.” And as such, “it doesn’t make much sense to consider particular proposals for deregulating or cutting taxes, without regard to the role the taxes and regulations play in the overall structure of state capitalism” and the strategy employed by libertarians should be to “first . . . dismantle the fundamental, structural forms of state intervention whose primary effect is to enable exploitation; and only then to dismantle the secondary, ameliorative forms of intervention which serve to make life bearable for the average person living under a system of state-enabled exploitation.” From what I can tell, Labadie seems to be somewhere between these two views.

[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés]

Emma Goldman is someone who is frequently associated with anarchism as a historical phenomenon. Her mix of anti-state activism, radical support for feminism and free love movements in the early 20th century, and her radiant life of praxis for the sake of anarchy echo in our understandings of what it means to be an anarchist today.

Before getting into Goldman in this analysis, it’s worth mentioning that she was a communist, which might prompt some questions from sects of the libertarian sphere as to her validity as a speaker. Goldman, though, was vehemently anti-community control, anti-state, and pro-individualism. Her lifelong friend Voltairine De Cleyre is a favorite theorist of the center and for good reason. The two had disagreements on economics but repeatedly defended each other in the public eye because, as they saw it, both had much to add to the anarchist discussion. For today’s purpose, her analysis is useful, and if any “anarchist-communist” deserves to be respected by anarchists of the non-social strand, it’s her.

Goldman does not exist without contention in anarchist circles however, even beyond this. Much of the philosophical canon today would posit both Nietzsche and much “egoist” philosophy as, at least in some sense, anti-anarchist. Goldman, contrary to this notion (which also existed during her time, and which she openly attacked), incorporated egoism, particularly influenced by Stirner and Nietzsche, into her own anarchist communism (Was Nietzsche even an egoist? Maybe).

Many questions have been imposed in Cory Massimino’s Introduction to this symposium, surrounding how anarchism and egoism have historically and can potentially coincide and interact. A few of these questions, specifically surrounding questions of praxis, empathy, and ethics, can be answered insightfully with readings of Goldman and of other revolutionary readings of Stirner and Nietzsche. Rai Ling brings up an interesting perspective, one that I think is important to tackle. Not only are there questions about contradictions between egoism and anarchism, but more importantly, there are questions about what use anarchists can get from historical individualist and egoist philosophers. The goal of this piece is to point out some of the ways that Stirner, Nietzsche, and Egoism interact with anarchism, using at least in part Emma Goldman’s analysis of anarchism and individualism.

Nietzsche the Authoritarian

To start, Nietzsche is a weird figure when speaking from an anarchist perspective. He’s not exactly an “egoist” or an “anarchist” exactly, but his ideas are useful for us nonetheless. Nietzsche’s fierce criticism of group-think and democracy echo things that individualist anarchists have argued for centuries.

Goldman’s reading of Nietzsche offers us some key insights into what her individualist anarchism was about. To Goldman, the idea of an übermensch (to those not familiar with Nietzsche, the übermensch was a sort of ideal state of being that transcended what he saw as “resentment” or “slave morality”) was not purely an idea of a master, rather an entirely new concept of self bred without authority or negation. The extension of power to a nietzschean anarchist is the creation of a life that does not subordinate people to slave or master, that maximizes autonomy on principle and without ressentiment (borrowing slightly here from Deleuze’s Nietzsche as well.) 

“The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer’s ideas or personality. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a hater of the weak because he believed in the Ubermensch. It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the Uebermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves.” (Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays)

Goldman also applies her Nietzschean individualism to morality as a concept, which is important for modern anarchists to keep in mind. Goldman’s ideas of free love and feminism were even more revolutionary then than they would be considered to be now, yet, echoing Bakunin and anarchists prior to her, she threw question to every aspect of societal morality, discussing how these systems that Nietzsche also criticized upheld the systems of domination that bred “a race of weaklings and slaves.” It is the ressentiment present in the master-slave relation, for example, that maintains a concept like “the patriarchy,” which traps both the “master” (lets say men) and the “slave” (lets say women) in the confines of ressentiment, and prevents an anarchist goal of the maximization of agency. A Nietzschean lens offers entirely new criticism of power relations and how to move beyond them.

Essentially, an anarchist lens of Nietzsche would posit that systems of power continue to breed those who dominate and those to be dominated. These power relations continue to foster their own existence, and liberty as a concept forces us to view identity in a scope beyond politics of domination.

Nietzsche was also famous for his concept of a “will to power,” which may set off many anarchist red flags. To pretend as though there have never been revolutionary readings of Nietzsche, including this fundamental piece of him, is ignorant. To interpret Nietzsche’s concept of “power” as domination is shallow to begin with, as both Goldman and Deleuze would point out (which are the most useful lenses surrounding Nietzsche for anarchists in my view). Power is less a social status symbol and moreso a fundamentally ontological reality, in the sense that (without getting into too much jargon) Nietzsche views existence as a flux of drives, and power as the dominance of said drives. The “will to power” in the ultimate simplification could be explained as the will to being, domination of reality, not of agency. If anything, the will to power is an expression, an offshoot, of agency. One’s will to power is simply one’s existence, and in the sense that the will to power is social, it is largely expressed in desiring-drives, ones that anarchy, more so than any other “system,” can fulfill.

The use Nietzsche provides us here, according to Goldman, is that his analysis points to a whole new conceptualization of identity and relations away from hierarchy and negation. The presence of ultimate positivity and affirmation in his ontology is echoed in any political applications we have of him, and, in my opinion, only serve to aid the anarchist goal of agency as a virtue. The idea of the ubermensch, when applied to say, economics, can help us conceptualize a market actor separate from capitalism when thought of through an explicitly mutualist lens. Goldman and Deleuze have both worked to ally Nietzsche’s powerful analysis to a revolutionary individualist cause, and it’s up to us to apply it.

Stirner the Narcissist

Nietzschean analysis has been briefly explored, especially through the lens put forth by Goldman, as a useful tool for a modern anarchist. Even more popular in anarchist circles, even a key inspiration to historical figures in our own school of mutualist anarchism (Tucker and Lum, for example), is Stirner and his Egoism. There is much to explore between market anarchism and egoism (and postmodernism) but for brevity’s sake, I’ll go over a few key concepts in modern egoist anarchism and how I believe they can be useful for a mutualist point of view.

Returning to Goldman’s Stirner, Goldman uses him towards the start of her most famous published work to formulate an anarchist criticism of democracy. This criticism, namely how the majority itself has no right over the individual, and how agency is contradictory to the spirit of democracy itself, comes from her Egoism, and certainly is useful to anarchist analysis today. Goldman sees the mass as a force for evil, explicitly thoughtless and uncritical, and instead motivated by its own preservation and thus the continuation of needless social domination. She cites, for example, the continuation of racism throughout America despite her clear personal objection as well as, what she believed, the absolute agency of the individual superseding any sort of racist domination. This, in my opinion, is a pretty key insight to any modern anarchist about how anarchists historically have and should continue to blend our ethical analysis with social movements and social persecution.

This critique of group think isn’t unique to communists whatsoever. Applied to economics, we can also formulate criticism of some of the “democratic-planning” spouted by the further “left” of anti-capitalism (although, to be clear, not by Goldman herself). This idea that liberty at its most potent is not expressed via group democracy, but a radical display of agency against external control, helps to position a key difference between even some Marxist conceptions of equality and liberty, and those useful to an anarchist.

Modern Egoists also like to point to the “union of egoists” as a concept, essentially relations built entirely on voluntary action and participation at the hands of individuals. This is something libertarian individualists from across the board, Goldman to Tucker to Rand, can all tend to agree with, the power of a “union of egoists” so to speak. This concept though, with its full potential realized, rightfully criticizes certain flaws in state libertarianism, including the state as a mediator of contract.

Economically, a union of egoists could be perhaps imagined as essentially just transactions based on trust rather than state-enforced contract, which is once again useful for mutualist analysis (seeing as the concept itself would see the freedom to withdraw and the absolute lack of coercive oversight as crucial). An economy run on “unions of egoists” that can still adequately produce and provide would essentially run on entirely voluntary trade without authoritarian interference (…mutualism?) A “union of egoists” functions without force, purely of fulfilled desire and voluntary contract, which has been the stated economic goal of the market anarchist sects of libertarianism for several decades.

Goldman’s individualist analysis ties neatly into her own anarchism, which I once again see as a good thing to explore for anarchists all over the spectrum.

“Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not taxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and then elaborate on the latter.

ANARCHISM: The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

The new social order rests, of course, on the materialistic basis of life; but while all Anarchists agree that the main evil today is an economic one, they maintain that the solution of that evil can be brought about only through the consideration of every phase of life, — individual, as well as the collective; the internal, as well as the external phases.” 

Her idea of anarchism as an ethical framework critical of all domination and hierarchical violence serves not only to pair nicely with an idea of a voluntary society built on “unions of egoists,” but also helps to directly disprove the idea that all anarchists want is chaos and destruction. In reality, she spent much of her career proving how her individualist anarchism, if anything, was most of all devoted to love.

Goldman also considered herself staunchly against morality, which, especially to right libertarians, can seem like sort of a red flag. Anarchism, after all, is a moral stance, no? Goldman’s stance on morality is not the stereotypical faux-egoist “do whatever you want” (or perhaps it is, in its most optimistic format). Rather, her criticism rests upon her readings of both Nietzsche and Stirner, and how they both, in their own ways, attacked the tendency of morality to suppress desire and autonomy, to deprave, to punish those starving and not those who are guilty for starving them, and to praise the concept of social domination as to punish free expression. Her critique of morality lies in the sense that she views morality as a set of imposed laws by a social body that restrict autonomy, whereas her fundamentally positive ethic of liberty positions itself in absolute favor of individualism and freedom. We must be mindful in how thinkers use and apply the concept of morality when discussing the entire field that is anti-moral anarchism.

Egoist criticisms of morality (beyond Goldman’s criticism of social dogma and group think,) as mentioned by Rai ling tend to deal at least partially in the rigidity of identity surrounding many moral claims, which apply quite often to right-libertarian conceptions of property and such. Dyer Lum applies his own criticism to capitalist ideas of natural rights, specifically how they refuse to deal with the fluidity present in naturally occurring situations, and ends up echoing the egoists (including Goldman) on this point. These critiques extend beyond certain conceptions of natural rights, though.

Property, to mutualists, and to certain egoists, is moreso important as a maximization of individual identity and agency. Mutualists can utilize the radical individualism of Goldman, Stirner and Nietzsche to criticize both the left and the right in the ways that they individually slip back into “group-think” and statism. In fact, many egoists posit themselves as distinctly different from capitalist-individualists in the sense that they view even concepts like the “NAP” or Lockean property rights as external conductions of force at the hands of society, which partially accounts for the mutualist critique of systems of absentee property. Mutualists and egoists alike would treat possession as in flux and a monopoly as a use of force.

Emma Goldman was a communist, sure, but not a Marxist in the sense that she wanted community dictatorship, rather, a communist in the sense that she wanted an absolute abolition of the forces upholding private property. Mutualists here would side with her old friend De Cleyre, insisting that while absentee property and individual property and such do directly require force, people asserting their own autonomy by use can also be understood as a sort of ownership, and thus an emancipatory property.

This is not to say, however, that her criticism isn’t in many ways real and valid. The rigidity of capitalist property identity, the seeming non-flexibility of Lockean property theory, the common right wing support for monopolization and the continued disfortune of the lower class, anarchy as a movement that fights for mutual aid despite state-induced obstacles to such — all of these serve as important lessons as to how property as a concept can bring about authoritarianism, and how the reclamation of property (modern capitalist property specifically, which was maintained and is upheld by the state) can be a force for anarchist revolution. This is why De Cleyre published an essay where she defended both Goldman and Expropriation as an anarchist principle, insisting that, contrary to some of her marketist peers, current property norms did not deserve our respect. And they still don’t.

Emma Goldman’s legacy is deservedly strong. Her synthesis of Kropotkin and Stirner was inventive. Her reading of Nietzsche was revolutionary. Goldman gave the anarchist movement something it needed: a comprehensive introduction of non-anarchist, individualist philosophy, and a subsequent construction of a libertarian ethic out of the synthesis. She used her anarchism, in conjunction with what she took from Stirner and Nietzsche, to criticize democracy, power, left governmentalism, majoritarianism, and in the process, helped highlight so much of what makes the anarchist movement stand out. As I put it in the first piece I wrote for the center, “Our resistance must revolve around free, dynamic and individual imagination.” That is what Goldman, through her individualist analysis and critique of society, democracy, leftism etc. was getting to. An anarchist ethic that went much, much deeper than vulgar majoritarianism.

At the end of the day, my anarchism is one that is radically individualist, subjectivist and fluid. Lum, Nietzsche, Stirner and Goldman, regardless of debates surrounding what does or does not make these people anarchists, have analyses worth exploring that can aid our own perceptions of authority and anarchist resistance. For an anarchism that claims to deal in “individualism,” including in at least some sense market anarchism, it’s worth exploring further one of the most rabidly individualist philosophical projects in recent history. This is not the end of the crossover between market anarchism and a million different individualist, egoist and anarchist interpretations of things, rather, a jumping off point. I think, going forward, a primary question can be posed: how can egoism inform our own analysis? In what ways does it make us think, question, and retaliate?

Liberty and the State

The anarchistic solution of the money problem is so simple as to cause amazement. It is to permit anyone and everyone to go into the banking system. Why not? No one objects to anyone going into the hat business or building business or any other non-invasive enterprise. Naturally those who furnish the soundest and cheapest money will crowd others out of existence [1]. To facilitate recognizability there would probably be cooperation or mergers between the banks. The public at large would be the “rulers” of this type of institution because they would patronize it or not, at will, and it must maintain its efficiency and reputability because of the pressure of competition. 

The difference between this type of institution and the State or State protected institutions is that the latter, due mostly to the ignorance of people but also by the threat of violence, are endowed with arbitrary power. If the State would be on a voluntary taxation basis as any other business it would have to give something else than abuse and the misappropriation of funds else no one would support it. But this would mean that it would cease to be a state in the anarchistic sense. Of course this is only the economic objection to the State; there are many other ways that it restricts and hampers the non-invasive life of a nation. The State is the cancer in the social life of a people.

That is why those in political life are looked upon as criminals by anarchists, not because they so much actually intend to do wrong, even the political life does corrupt a man, but because the effects of their actions are to provoke what is more obviously criminal. The president of the United States is bringing ruin to its inhabitants, not because he is intending to do so but because he is ignorant. It is dangerous to entrust the destiny of people to ignorant men [2]. That is why only by the abolition of arbitrary power can there be any security or harmony among people. Only by the inauguration of voluntarily supported institutions can the possibility of invasiveness be minimalized [3]. This would be a real democracy. The State must be destroyed not by killing those in power, but by destroying the political myth in the minds of people [4]. Then the State would be laughed away as an absurdity. Meanwhile we must not only discover the nature of liberty, its possibilities and promise, but must also combat the thousand and one spurious nostrums which now tempt the human race. 

It is true however that liberty alone will do the trick. Human society, must, in freedom, become one large experimental field wherein, according to the law of the survival of the fittest, only those institutions and customs which actually serve human needs can survive. Only by the free and unhampered operation of this great law will folly be eliminated because the absence of paternalism places fools in a position to reap the full rewards of their folly and in doing so become wise, i.e. capable, self-reliant, and responsible.

Of course, in the larger view, the law of the survival of the fittest, which, by the way and contrary to the beliefs of many humanitarians, is an amoral law and taxes no cognizance of “good” or “bad” men, is always in operation, We the great mass of people suffer today because, in our ignorance we do not understand how to live. But in the long run, if there is to be any “survival” on this earth, it is within the realm of certainty that it is to come only by the extension of individual liberties through the ultimate abolition of the State, the elimination of all government of man by man.

1. “Existence” misspelled as “existance.” 
2. “Entrust” misspelled as “intrust.”
3. “Inauguration” misspelled as “inaugeration.”
4. Word identified as “destroyed” is illegible.

Commentary – Eric Fleischmann

First published in a 1934 edition of John G. Scott and Jo Ann Wheeler’s version of Mother Earth and later archived in the Joseph A. Labadie Collection of the University of Michigan Library, this newly welcomed part of the Laurance Labadie Archival Project is a short and sweet assessment of why government sucks regardless of who is in power. I’ve said in a previous piece that “this is not about me,” but I can’t help but reference a point I made in my own interview by Joel Williamson for The Enragés. That is: people being essentially ‘good’ is not a solid basis for anarchism because that same logic can justify the idea that we only need to elect the ‘good-est’ people (often in a conflation of both morality and skill) and the government will be good; this can be seen in everything from Plato’s call for the wisest among people to become philosopher kings all the way to republicans arguing that Donald Trump was a good pick for president because he is both a good Christian (nonsense) and a good businessman (also nonsense). This feels like a related point to that being made by Labadie that politicians are seen as bad by anarchists “not because they so much actually intend to do wrong, even the political life does corrupt a man, but because the effects of their actions are to provoke what is more obviously criminal,” as in “bringing ruin to its inhabitants.” He is arguing that the goodness of an individual politician or bureaucrat is irrelevant to the inevitable failures and criminality of the state.

This means that the state cannot truly be used for the benefit of all classes for the important reason that it is not like a business “on a voluntary taxation basis” so that “it would have to give something else than abuse and the misappropriation of funds else no one would support it.” Instead, through violence, it gives politicians “arbitrary power” and entrusts “the destiny of people to ignorant men.” It does not matter how well intentioned a politician—think Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader, or AOC—might be or even how ostensibly effective and/or popular some of their policies might be because the government is not subject to supply and demand like market entities. Therefore, beyond the minimal level of democratic decision making particularly in the United States, agents of the state will be perpetually, as Labadie says, “ignorant” and “arbitrary” when attempting to make sweeping decisions regarding society. This is why the U.S. Government has 2,000 M-1 Abrams tanks gathering dust in the California desert even as tanks continue to be produced as they have non-stop since WW2 or why it spends $1.7 billion a year maintaining hundreds of thousands of empty buildings. These are fairly benign examples but go toward showing that, as a recent Princeton study concludes, “[t]he preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Okumak üzere olduğunuz makale, James C. Wilson tarafından kaleme alınmış. 19 Ekim 2020 tarihinde “Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand and the Cult of Productivity” başlığı altında yayınlanmıştır.

Ayn Rand’ın 1957 tarihinde yazılmış Atlas Silkindi adlı romanı, şanı kendisinden önce giden bir eser. Bazıları ondan nefret ediyor bazıları seviyor, ancak bu kitabı okumamışlar da dahil bu sitenin çoğu ziyaretçisi, büyük ihtimalle kitabın ana olay örgüleri ve yazarın ideolojik duruşu hakkında bilgi sahibidir. Bu nedenle bu incelemede spoiler bulunacaktır.

Burada bazı yazarların bu kitaptan büyük ölçüde etkilendiği ve en azından birinin Ayn Rand Studies dergisinde editör olarak çok zaman harcamış olduğu gerçeği de var tabii. Buradaki birçok kişi Rand’ın çalışmasının ve yaşamının, felsefesinin ve mirasının çeşitli yönlerini eleştirdi ancak onun hayranları ve eleştirenleri genelde aynı kişilerdi. Bu makale, kitabın olumsuz yanlarına odaklanacak olsa da Chris Matthew Sciabarra gibileri Rand’ın yazılarının yardımıyla hastalıklarıyla mücadele edebilmek için moral bulabildi.

Atlas Silkindi, Ayn Rand’ın başyapıtı olarak gördüğü, felsefe ve epistemoloji hakkındaki görüşlerini en çok öne çıkaran, böylece de onu bir kurgu yazarından bir nevi hareket liderine çeviren üçüncü ve son romanıdır.

Tabii Atlas Silkindi de kurgusal bir eser olmakla birlikte, yazar kapitalizm, etik ve epistemoloji hakkında inançlarını ön planda tutmaya özen gösteriyor, onları saklamak gibi bir amaç gütmüyor. Ancak bu da hikâyenin yazarın siyasi görüşlerini ifade etmek için kullandığı salt bir araç olduğu anlamına gelmez, iki amaç yoğun bir şekilde iç içe görünüyor ki eğer ideoloji güdümlü kısım çıkarılabilseydi, kitap dünyanın en uzun kurgu eserlerinden birinden en kısalarından birine dönüşürdü.

Karakterler uzun süren ideolojik hasbihaller yapma eğilimi gösteriyorlar. Perspektif ve bu bağlamda motivasyonları açısından tamamen tekdüze olmasalar da yazarın son derece kendi özgü görüşleri için ağız rolü oynadıklarını çok fazla görüyoruz ya da işler kolay olsun diye iyi hiçbir şey söyleyemeyen, saman adam safsatası tarzı rollerde oluyorlar. Rand, yönetici elitin cahil, fiziksel olarak çekici olmayan, sağduyudan yoksun ve kendi yoz amaçları için fedakâr retorik kullanmaya fazlasıyla istekli olduğu distopik bir vizyon yaratıyor. Küresel ekonomiyi yok ederek ve hepimize daha bencil olmayı öğreterek günü kurtarmak, abartılı derecede çekici, zeki, iyi konuşan endüstriyel dehalardan oluşan bir gruba düşüyor.

Kitaba yazım stili üzerinden saldırmak yeterince kolay. Yazım stili, karşıt görüşler konusunda saman adam safsatasına sık sık düşüyor. Bunun en büyük örneği, gerçekte hikayedeki gibi olamayacak kadar soyut olan 50 sayfalık bir felsefi konuşma. Ve, Rand’ın erkekler, erkekler tarafından yapılan şeyler, sadece belirli tipteki erkekler ve onlara ihtiyaç duyanlarla ilgili nesri 1000 sayfa okununca yorucu oluyor. Ne yazık ki, önemli noktaları kaçırmadan verilen mesaja yönelik saldırı yapmak daha zor olabilir. Atlas Silkindi’nin teşvik ettiği bencillik türünün sınırlarını görmezden gelirken sadece Rand bencilliği teşvik ediyor ve hoşnut değiliz gibi konumlanan eleştirmenlerin durumu böyledir.

Rand’ın bencilliği bir erdem olarak görerek övmesi, sadece insanların daha fazla para kazanmak için daha fazla çalışmaları gerektiğini söylemekle sınırlıdır. Eğer bencilliğiniz, daha fazla tatil zamanı, ailenizle daha fazla zaman geçirmek istemek gibi şeylerse Rand’ın pek yardımı dokunmaz. Rand bu kitapta bencilliği neredeyse tamamen bir çalışma kültürünü ve üretkenlikle ilgili sağlıksız bir saplantıyı teşvik etmek için kullanıyor. Atlas Silkindi’de Rand’ın iyi olarak gördüğü karakterler ile kötü karakterler arasında net bir ayrım çizgisi var. Hikayedeki iyi adamların hepsi, tüm yaşamları ve kimlikleri işleri etrafında toplanmış, kararlı işkolikler olma eğilimindedirler.

Kitabın başlarında, konuşurken neredeyse tamamen Rand için bir sözcü görevi gören Francisco D’anconia karakteri, kahramanı Dagny Taggart’a, onda gördüğü değerin sadece bir gün babasının tren şirketini yöneteceği gerçeğinden geldiğini açıkça söyler. Kitabın başında Dagny’nin iş dışında tek ilgisinin besteci Richard Halley’in müziği olduğu açıkça ortaya çıkıyor. Son yıllarda yaptığı tek tatilin, kitabın başlamasından üç yıl önce, bir aylık planladığı ama bir hafta sonra geri döndüğü aralık olduğu belirtiliyor. Romantik partneri ve kitabın diğer kahramanı Hank Rearden, onun da aynısını beş yıl önce yaşadığını belirtiyor. İkisi birlikte tatil yaptıklarında (ki bunu sadece kendilerini tanıyan insanlar arasında birbirlerinin yanında olamadıkları için yaparlar), zamanı iş ile ilgili bir gezi için kullanmaya karar verirler.

İşte bunlar Atlas Silkindi’nn kahramanları. Çalışma tutkularının takdire şayan olduğu gösterilmeye çalışılıyor. Yukarıda bahsi geçen Danagger’e, “İşini seven, çalışmaktan başka hiçbir şeye saygı duymayan, her türlü amaçsızlığı, edilgenliği ve vazgeçmeyi hor gören kişi” olarak hitap edilmektedir.

Rand’ın bu çalışma takıntısını trajik bir ışık altında sunduğu iddia edilebilirken, en azından bazı karakterler için, işe olan tutkularını genel olarak olumlu görüyor. Normal şartlar altında Danagger ve Rearden güvenilirdirler ve insan refahına ölçülemez miktarlarda katkıda bulunurlar gibi gösterilir.

Rand’ın, bu karakterlerin amaçlarını ve çok fazla işe odaklanmalarını, böylece de hayatlarının diğer yönlerini ihmal ettiklerini ima ettiği iddia edilebilir. Ancak bu, mesajını saklamaktan çekinmeyen bu kitapta açıkça belirtilmemiştir. Bunun ima edildiği, Rearden’in bölümünde, karakterin felsefesini ve değerlerini hayatının diğer alanlarına uygulamayı öğrenmesiyle başlıyor gibi görünüyor. Ancak pratikte bunun yapabildiği şey, Dagny ile ilişkisi hakkında halka açık olmaya daha istekli olması, felsefesini ideolojik düşmanlarına daha iyi savunabilmesi ve ailesine karşı daha tiksindirici şeyler düşünmesi gibi görünüyor.

Bencilliğinin getirdiği değerleri hayatının geri kalanına uygulama çabalarında, Hank Rearden’ın kaya tırmanışı, portre resimler ve 1950’lerde insanların eğlence olsun diye yaptığı benzeri aktivitelere giriştiğini görmüyoruz. Başka bir deyişle, bencilliğin bu sözde örnekleri sayılabilecek insanların hiçbiri yalnızca kendilerine fayda sağlayacak bu aktivitelere zaman ayırmıyor. Belki de bu, Dagny’nin reklam panolarıyla dolu olmayan, bozulmamış doğa manzaraları isteyen insanlara duyduğu kine yansıyor. Reklam panoları tarafından teşvik edilen ticaret sayısız gruba yarar sağlar, ancak bozulmamış bir vahşi doğa manzarasının tadını çıkarmak istemek tamamen bencilliktir.

Rand, sanat ve dostluk gibi şeylere (pratiğe geçmeden) sözlü olarak destek verse de kitapta her ikisi de ideolojinin keskin sınırları içinde kalıyor. Galt’s Gulch dışındaki popüler eğlence, Rand tarafından rutin olarak “kendi varlığından nefret eden” bir çöp olarak görülürken, Galt’ın grevcileri arasında adı geçen birkaç sanatçı muhtemelen yalnızca en mükemmel işi çıkarıyor. İnsan yakınlaşmasına benzeyen yegâne örnekler de sadece aynı fikirde olanlar arasında oluyor. Atlas Silkindi’deki tek başarılı çiftler benzer düşünen işkolikler olduğu için bu özellikle romantik aşk için geçerli denebilir.

Dagny Taggart, hikâyede ideolojiye en çok bağlı ve çalışkan olan kadın ve dikkatin ona çekilmesi erkek kahramanların genel dürüstlüğünün, doğruluklarının kanıtı olarak sunulur. Rand, kitabın hem içinde hem de dışında, birinin felsefesini kimi çekici bulduklarına kimi bulmadıklarına göre anlayabileceğini iddia ediyor. Şaşırtıcı olmayan bir şekilde, Dagny’nin karakter arkı, her biri bir öncekinden daha çok ideolojiye bağlı ve çalışkan üç ana erkek kahramanla bir dizi romantizm içeriyor.

Onları işlerinden uzaklaştıran tek şey, John Galt adında başka bir iş odaklı süper dahi tarafından planlanan yukarıda değinilen greve katılmaktır. Bu kişi de Dagny için romantik hedefleri olan, ideolojik konuşmalar yapmak dışında belirgin bir kişiliğe sahip olmayan bir karakter.

Rand’a karşı adil olmak gerekirse, kişinin kendini işine dengeli bir yaşamı umursamadan adaması, topluma net bir fayda sağlayabilir. Ancak Rand, başkalarına fayda sağlama amacının kişinin işinde bir yerinin olmamasını, böyle bir ahlaki sorumluluğun olmamasını açıkça istiyor. Kâr ve bu kârdan gelen başarı duygusu ana motivasyon olmalıdır ona göre.

Birinin Rand’ın kahramanlarınınkine benzer bir tutkuyla yaşaması ancak Galt ve Rearden örneğinde olduğu gibi yeni bir motor veya metal türü yaratmak ya da Dagny Taggart örneğinde olduğu gibi tüm ülkenin kullanabileceği bir tren ağını yönetmek kadar heyecan verici bir şey içeriyorsa mümkün olabilir. Ama gerçekçi olursak çoğumuz bunu yapamayacak durumdayız.

Tipik bir beyaz yakalı işyeri, neredeyse kesinlikle, küçük şeylerde bile yaygara çıkaran patronları, arkanızdan iş çeviren iş arkadaşları, iğrenç kotalar, değersiz halkla ilişkiler kampanyaları, rezalet bilgisayar sistemlerini, asabi müşterileri, anlamsız formlar ve raporları, arızalı ofis ekipmanları ve beklemekten ağaç olacağınız telefonlarda geçecek sonsuz zaman gibi şeylere sahip olur.

Rand, önceki işlerinde bu aksaklıkları kabul etme konusunda iyi iş çıkarsa da Atlas Silkindi’de durum farklı. Burada sadece Amerikan şirketlerini ideal olarak gösterirken burada çalışan insanları da genel olarak devlet müdahalesine üzülmedikleri sürece mutlu ve tatmin olmuş gösteriyor. İronik bir şekilde, devlet müdahalesinin, büyük firmaları şu an olduğu ve kitabın yazıldığı tarihteki gibi hiyerarşik ve yozlaşmış hale getirmedeki rolünü gözden kaçırıyor gibi görünüyor. Bu gerçeği kendi istediğinde görmesi, genellikle kendi fikirlerinin daha radikal etkilerini görmezden gelmesine sebep olur.

Bir kişinin üstte bahsedilen tipik ve yozlaşmış bir işyerinde çalışmayı, hayatının merkezi yapması çoğumuz için bencil değil, aksine Rand’ın karşı çıkacağı bir şey olan kendini feda etmektir. Hayatlarını gerçekten sevenler (Rand’ın kendisinin ve kahramanlarının defalarca iddia ettiği gibi), muhtemelen bu tür angaryalar altında daha az zaman harcamak isteyeceklerdir. İnsanlığın büyük çoğunluğu için bir Rand kahramanı gibi yaşamaya teşebbüs etmek bencillik değil, kendini gösteren bir kölelik olacaktır.

Tekrar Rand’a karşı adil olmak gerekirse, aşırı regülasyonlar ve devlet yolsuzluğu üstteki sorunları daha yaygın hale getirdiğinde, kahramanlar büyük kitlelere etki eden işlerini bırakıp greve gidiyorlar. Rand, bunun okuyucularına açık olması gereken bir seçenek olduğunu belirtiyor, çünkü devlet ve özel aktörler tarafından uygulanan güç kullanma girişimleri, gerçek dünyamızda mevcut güç ve zenginlik dağılımlarının belirlenmesinde ciddi bir rol oynadı. Çok sayıda hükümet kayırmacılığının ve kısıtlamasının verimsiz bürokratik işletmeler arasında büyük sermaye yoğunlaşmasına yol açtığı bizimki gibi bir toplumda, kişi kesinlikle her şeyini ortaya koymadığı için suçlanamaz. Ne de olsa kim Rand’ın da kötü olarak gördüğü bu aktörlerin gerçek hayat karşılıklarında köle gibi çalışmak ister ki?

Ne yazık ki Rand, kahramanlarının iş merkezli yaşamlarının, ideal koşullarda bile insanlar için ideal davranış biçimi olmasını ve grevin, devleti asil işkoliklerin sırtından kurtarmak için yalnızca geçici bir önlem olduğunu şiddetle ima ediyor.

Kahramanlarının kendilerini sürekli daha fazla para kazanmaya adamış olmalarına rağmen, paranın satın alabileceği şeylerle ilgilenmiyor gibi görünmeleridir. Aslında yukarıda adı geçen karakter Francisco, “dünyevi şeylerin edinilmesini varoluşun tek amacı” olarak görüyor ve onların kendisine zevk vermesini bekliyor, ancak neden daha fazla elde ettiğinde daha az hissettiğini merak ediyor.

Özellikle ofisten uzaklaşmayı ve hayattan zevk almayı sevmezler. Kitapta tekrarlanan bir nakarat “kutlamalar sadece kutlayacak bir şeyi olanlar için olmalıdır” şeklinde. Aynı şekilde Francisco, dışarı çıkıp partilediği, karşı cinsten insanlarla vakit geçirdiği için diğer kahramanlar tarafından ağır bir şekilde eleştirilir. Bunun daha sonra gerçek faaliyetleri için bir kılıf olduğu ortaya çıkıyor ve kendisi zaten daha önce öyleymiş gibi gösterdiği playboy yaşam tarzını daha çok kınıyor.

Rand, hayatta bir amaca sahip olmaya büyük önem verir, ona göre de bu ücretli işinizin olmasıdır. Önceki çalışmalarında, kişinin yapmak istediği şeyi yapabilmesi için ödeme almasını, bunun da işin kendisi olmasının her zaman kolay ve mümkün olmadığını kabul ediyor gibi görünse de Atlas Silkindi’de bu tam bir ideal olarak gösteriliyor. Ücretli işinden aldığı parayı gerçekten eğlendiği ve istediği aktivitelere harcayan kişilere pek rastlanmaz. Ayrıca kişinin işinden tatmin olma seviyesi, söz konusu işin başkalarına yaptığı herhangi bir olumlu etkiden bağımsız olmalıdır. İnsan, örneğin kimsenin kullanmadığı bir demiryolu gibi, yaratmada nasıl bir başarı duygusu edineceğini merak etmelidir. Rand, sırf bir amacımız olsun diye bizim bir amacımız olmasını isteme tuzağına düşer ki bu, bir amacın olmamasından pek de farklı değildir.

Rand, çalışmak için yaşamaktan ziyade yaşamak için çalışmanın daha bencil ve daha özgürleştirici olasılığını görmezden geliyor. Daha karlı bir girişimde çalışmayı reddetmekten veya daha düşük ücretli, daha zevkli bir işte çalışmayı seçmekten daha bencil ne olabilir? Ya da daha iyisi, kendine daha fazla zaman ayırmak için daha uzun saatler çalışma fırsatını geri çevirmek. Bencil arzuların yerine getirilmesini yalnızca elde edilen kâr açısından gören kişi, bencil arzulara ilişkin sığ bir anlayışa sahiptir.

Rand, üretkenliğe bencillikten daha fazla değer veriyor gibi görünüyor, bu nedenle, topraklarının kendi üretkenlik standartlarını karşılama konusundaki isteksizlikleri nedeniyle haklı olarak alındığına inandığı Kızılderili soykırımını savunuyor. 1974’te West Point askeri akademisinde bir konferansta şunları söylediği aktarılıyor:

Ama diyelim ki hepsi güzel masum vahşilerdi -ki kesinlikle öyle değillerdi. Bu kıtada beyaz adama karşı çıkarak ne için savaştılar? İlkel bir varoluşa devam etme istekleri için; dünyanın kalanından izole olma “hakları” için– herkesi dışarıda tutmak ve böylece hayvanlar ya da mağara adamları gibi yaşayabilmeleri için. Yanında bir medeniyet unsuru getiren herhangi bir Avrupalı, bu kıtayı ele geçirme hakkına sahipti ve bazılarının bunu yapmış olması harika.

Kesinlikle herhangi bir sağlam mülkiyet savunması, Rand’ın arzu ettiği üretkenlik düzeyinin gerisinde kalmalarına rağmen, insanların bin yıldır kullandıkları toprakta kalma hakkını savunabilecektir.

Ayn Rand’ın yazıları, liberter hareket için daha başarılı işe alım araçlarından biri olarak kabul ediliyor. Bu, hareketimizin neden hala bu kadar marjinal olduğunu yansıtıyor olabilir. Bu çalışma takıntılı olduğu için, toplumun ne olması gerektiğine dair görüş, nihai olarak her zaman çekici değildir ve büyük ölçüde püritendir. Piyasaların, hatta şu anda sahip olduğumuz kusurlu olanların bile, bizi sürekli çalışma ihtiyacından nasıl kurtardığına ve işlerimiz dışında daha kaliteli zaman ve ilgi peşinde koşmamıza nasıl izin verdiğine daha fazla vurgu yapılmalıdır. Rand, yeniliklerin zaman kazandıran yönünden kısaca bahsederken, bu kitapta bu fikri mantıksal sonucuna kadar takip etmiyor. Bilgi ve enformasyonun yanı sıra mal ve hizmetlerin serbest akışının bizi çalışma ihtiyacının büyük ölçüde azaldığı kıtlık sonrası bir topluma nasıl ittiğinden daha fazla bahsetmek gerekirdi. Anarşik bir serbest piyasa sistemi, bizi her zamankinden daha fazla çalışmaya iten değil, bizi sürekli emekten kurtaran bir sistem olacaktır.

Piyasalarla ilgili bir başka olumlu şeyin de kusurlu durumlarında bile Galt’ınki gibi bir grevin işe yaramasını önleyecek olmaları olduğunu belirtmekte fayda var. Ne zaman bir sanayici istifa etse, yeni bir niş açılır ve birinin gerekli beceriyi öğrenmesi ve yerini alması için güçlü bir teşvik ortaya çıkar. Bu, belirli faaliyetlerin kanunla zorla engellendiği durumlarda gösterilmektedir ve yine de yapılacak para varsa, birileri duruma ayak uydurur.

Bu kitapla ilgili diğer gözle görülür sorunlardan bahsetmeye gerek yok, örneğin, bunun Rand’ı rahatsız eden insanlar üzerinde bir intikam planı olması, kahraman olarak gösterilen kişinin küresel ekonomiyi yok ettiği ve açlığa sebep olduğu gerçeği, seks ve ilişkiler hakkında tuhaf püriten görüşleri, fikri mülkiyet savunması (ki bu sadece devlet tarafından garanti edilmiş bir tekeldir), Rand’ın tüm felsefesinin dayatma safsatası etrafında şekillenmiş bir başarısızlık olması vb. Bunların hepsi başkaları tarafından uzun uzadıya tartışıldı.

Genel olarak, bu kitabı okumaktan en çok fayda sağlayacak insanlar, o kadar soldakilerdir ki, sağcı seçkinlerin dünyayı nasıl gördükleri hakkında hiçbir fikirleri yoktur. Yine de bu muhtemelen daha az zaman alan bir şekilde öğrenilebilir. Aksi takdirde, bu, her zaman olumlu yönde olmasa da genellikle en kötü sonuçlardan bahsederken mesajının olumlu etkilerini görmezden gelen, düşündürücü bir kitaptır.

If one’s goal is to have productive exchanges when the word capitalism is thrown into play, they must stop doing two things: naively assuming people are more or less on the same page when the term is used; and suggesting that one or another meaning of the word is completely wrong.

Some use the term to mean exactly the core of Gary Chartier’s “capitalism-1” and nothing else: an economic system featuring property rights and voluntary exchanges of goods and services. Others mean that core plus additional criteria — making the word into a package of ideas, set of conditions, or the interplay of various factors that create certain arrangements and dynamics. Still others use the word to mean the social, political, and economic system and forces we live with today — in other words, whatever we have now.

Each of these approaches, and many others, can be justified in different ways. Perhaps it would even be better if the term was dropped completely — proponents and detractors of their version alike would probably benefit from not chasing conversations in circles, and using words that capture their meaning and ideas more precisely.However, since the word is still being used, and probably will continue to be for quite some time, the next best thing is for those who use it to understand it means different things to different people. Developing a more sympathetic and learned understanding of how others use the term, and a more critical eye to some of the problems that come with how one uses it themselves, will help discussions move to the more important business of exploring what truly lies behind a preferred usage, improving the overall value of exchanges.

For Those Defending Capitalism as Capitalism-1

Those insisting capitalism means nothing more than “an economic system that features property rights and voluntary exchanges of goods and services” make life both easier and more difficult for themselves. Easier because this straightforward approach essentially just means a free/freed market. Hard because they often misunderstand that others don’t mean the same thing when using the word. They also — intentionally and unintentionally — use the term very loosely anyway, and complicate communication of their own ideas.

Those who use the word capitalism this way often jump to lecture others on the glories of markets when they hear any criticism against what others call capitalism. This reaction makes sense in cases where capitalism-1 is truly being put on the stand. Yet serious opponents of capitalism-1 in and of itself are relatively hard to come by. They are out there, but in the grander scheme of things, they are a minority of, at best, well-read, ideologues committed to wholesale alternative ideals of communal and collective socioeconomic arrangements with no room whatsoever for individual possessions and voluntary exchange.

What’s usually at play when many people bash capitalism isn’t even an indirect rejection of the fundamental principles of private possession/property and voluntary exchange. Typically, people are objecting to the more disturbing, objectionable, and inherently destructive and unjust aspects of the current order — such as capitalism-2 and/or capitalism-3, or another central feature.

Indeed, proponents of capitalism as capitalism-1 often miss the point of critiques against an order that incentivizes (and seems to inherently include) things like: corporations destroying the environment while hiding behind limited liability or a state program; a big business suing a smaller one into oblivion over intellectual property violations; financial markets being controlled and manipulated by a privileged sector that keeps getting bailouts; officers of corporations rotating into federal cabinet positions; and huge amounts of capital accumulation resulting in obscene amounts of social power and influence, just to name a few examples.

Typically, it’s here where the proponent of capitalism-1-but-nothing-more jumps to point out: the kind of things listed above have nothing to do with what they mean by capitalism; treating much of the dysfunction or injustice one observes today as part of the package deal of a “capitalist” system is simply incorrect; and, ultimately anyone doing so is at best mistaken and at worst arguing in bad faith. This counter, though it makes many who consider themselves capitalists proud of their teachable moment, is really just useless and cheap. Useless because it distracts from productive discussion that could be had about the problems with the current order; cheap as it also ignores many of the legitimate reasons capitalism means a lot more than capitalism-1 to so many.

Indeed, ample damage to the presentation of capitalism as the narrow concept of simply private ownership and markets has been done by proponents of this meaning themselves. On one day they use it to mean a very core concept, and on other days happily and sloppily using it as a catch-all for a broad picture of modern social and economic realities.

Consider that it’s easy (and correct) for the capitalist-1 to say it’s nonsense when some say everything wrong with the world is the result of capitalism — from a boss hiring someone and then abusing the power dynamic, through to the Iraq War. However, it’s also nonsense to claim everything good about the current order is the result of capitalism. Have an iPhone? Capitalism! Enjoying advances in modern medicine and healthcare? Well, ignore any other factor — it’s capitalism! Some guy in a developing country got a job? Forget the rest of the circumstances surrounding that, or the people suffering for other reasons — capitalism! Anything good happen to you today? Probably capitalism! And, perhaps the worst of the bunch, and the cause of so much over-generalization, implication, and inference: The USA vs. The USSR? Obviously, nothing more accurate than to describe that as a showdown between capitalism vs. communism! And guess what’s better? Guess what won the ultimate battle!?

Again, if someone uses capitalism to simply mean the core of “an economic system that features property rights and voluntary exchanges of goods and services,” then that’s fine. But, the smug insistence that their opponents aren’t using the term correctly amounts to much ado about nothing if they also use it as loosely as is convenient.

It is incumbent on one who means just capitalism-1 to not slip into broader meanings; always be prepared to present an explanation of what they intend with the term and what they don’t; and be more attentive to the fact that others often use the term more broadly.

This is precisely why self-proclaimed capitalists of capitalism-1 introduce a cringe-worthy non-sequitur by calling attention to the supposed “irony” of something like a “left-wing” artisan bashing capitalism online but later going on to sell 1,000,000 hipster bars of soap to earn their own riches. There is no contradiction — there’s just a difference in what is meant by a term.

For Those Critiquing or Rejecting Capitalism-1

Those who critique or reject capitalism in the form of capitalism-1 face the inverse of the above situation but the same conclusion: it is important to always keep clear that what is being discussed — in this case attacked — is the narrow and fundamental sense of the word. Slipping into broader meanings will distract from the fundamental contention with the core of private property and voluntary exchange, no matter what else follows.

For Those Critiquing or Rejecting Capitalism-X

For most others, going after capitalism means criticism of additional conditions that bring about a certain order stacked on top of the core of capitalism-1. In this case, it is crucial that anyone going this route understands that how productively they can communicate and how much they cover with the term capitalism are inversely related.

It is one thing to present a meaning of the term for discussion that is still relatively narrow and manageable — e.g., capitalism as “an economic system that features a symbiotic relationship between big business and government” or “rule — of workplaces, society, and (if there is one) the state — by…a relatively small number of people who control investable wealth and the means of production.” However, it is quite another to start mixing and matching several ideas on top of the narrower concept of capitalism-1, labelling that as capitalism, and then building a critique or rejection of it.

This is not to say it can’t be done — that’s beside the point. Anyone reading this essay, for example, can think of their own conception of capitalism, and from there critique every element of it. Yet, to do so productively is a challenge. There is the ever-present risk of slipping into broader meanings than the one intended, and the risk is amplified  by starting with a meaning for a term that is already relatively broad. The package-deal definition of capitalism will have one running around trying to patch every leak in the hull of a ship riddled with them. They will be spun in circles on their own conception of the word depending on whether they’re talking to someone who means capitalism more narrowly or broadly, agreeing with them or not.

Furthermore, one going this route must be prepared with a coherent case of how their conception of capitalism relates to the core of capitalism-1. In other words, if others agree with calling a certain collection of concepts and ideas capitalism proper, then the onus is on them to explain how the basic core of private property and voluntary exchange plays into everything else. Does capitalism-x necessarily follow from capitalism-1? Or, is the claim that it’s likely to? Is the idea that capitalism-1 doesn’t have to lead to capitalism-x, but often does when certain factors are present? Should the negative elements of capitalism-x lead others to reject capitalism-1, or is capitalism-1 acceptable as long as the other elements aren’t in effect? Or, perhaps, you’re using capitalism in a way that doesn’t really have capitalism-1 at its core. All are subtle, yet crucial, wrinkles in the story that, when ironed out, benefit one’s own thinking and provide a clearer presentation of what is part of, and implied by, an often opaque bundle of ideas and observations.

Ultimately, anyone that wants to continue using a composite meaning of capitalism must always be prepared to present it along with an explanation of their meaning. If they find it takes a relatively long time to do so, patience for others listening and enduring is warranted. Perhaps the most helpful thing one could do is come up with the most precise and clear descriptions of each stick in their bundle that is capitalism, and how they relate to each other. No one will immediately understand the finished puzzle unless the key pieces are explained.

For Those Referring to Capitalism as What We Have Now

Whether the goal is to critique or defend it, using capitalism to mean what-we-have-now-in-the-world as far as systems of politics and economics — perhaps demonstrated by, for instance, the political economy of countries like Canada and the U.S.A. — is as useful as a general gesture toward a huge buffet table of very different foods when someone asks you what you will be eating for lunch. In principle, it is an answer to a question as it narrows things down from everything to something. In practice, it tells you nothing.

What does “what we have now” even mean if we’re taking it as synonymous with the word capitalism? That will change shape as people take whatever they want from the buffet of the present reality, set it on a plate, and present their lunch as “capitalism.” It will rarely be the same from person to person, or conversation to conversation. The reality of this approach is that nothing can be precisely and consistently meant by it. Different countries have their own internal political-economies, and their politics and commercial spheres necessarily integrate with the global social and economic order in different ways. Everything from corporate law, labor law, the dynamics of the commercial and business sphere, the setup of their government and bureaucratic functions of the state, and so on vary in every way from subtle (yet important) considerations through to major differences. One clean “way” the world works or another is hard to put a pin on.

Some who mean capitalism as what we have now, do accept this point to some degree and readily admit capturing the entire global order under one descriptor is tricky. Their response is often to narrow things down at least a little further by geographic region or some other common denominator. In these cases, what is considered capitalist are the societies and economies of “The West,” or the “Commonwealth Countries,” for example. However, this attempt still doesn’t eliminate a troubling amount of imprecision and difference. Take considering “The West” as capitalist, for instance. The U.S. has a much different political, economic, and social reality compared to many Scandinavian countries — this is incidentally a point both proponents and opponents of either regime can agree on. Yes, both have elements of private possession and exchange, but the one thing all the proponents and opponents on each side can agree on is that neither one is similar enough to warrant being thrown into the exact same category.

Trying to get specific when it comes to “what we have now” causes other problems too. What part of the picture of the existing world is inherently capitalist then? Is it the powerful commercial interests? Is it the state and the various frameworks it upholds? Is it the judicial system? Is it the overall social attitude many adopt or are conditioned with? If it’s specific bits of every element, then what does the interplay between them look like? And again, it is absolutely worth repeating, where and what systems in the world can be classified as capitalist meaningfully and to what degree, since it would necessarily be a spectrum at that point.

All of these problems apply equally to proponents and opponents of capitalism as “what we have now.” However, an opponent has just a few more to deal with. Is the state or some form of government salvageable from capitalism, or is the current spectrum of forms of government necessarily capitalist and therefore somewhat or completely illegitimate? The same can be asked of certain elements of commerce and trade. And the big one is of course whether what we have now needs partial reform, or if it’s inherently unjustifiable and should be entirely dismantled — and whether the former or latter, you again have to go piece by piece as the definition covers everything we have now.

For Those Wondering What We Can Do

Short of trying to create a world where one meaning of capitalism is accepted by all, what one can do about all the potential trouble and confusion caused by the word is one of two things.

On the one hand, one can ensure they’re being the most helpful to their own point and the conversation at hand by establishing what they mean by capitalism so their conversation doesn’t build itself on a foundation of mismatched planks and cross-purposes. Sometimes this will reveal that agreement can’t easily be reached for the meaning of the term, which opens interesting areas to explore in and of themselves. Other times, reaching agreement on what the term means in a given context or conversation creates the kind of common understanding necessary for people to present a perspective for or against something and receive the most relevant responses — getting to the core of a disagreement, or even revealing that there’s less contention on certain points than one might have initially thought.

On the other hand, the kind of problems outlined throughout this essay could be more easily addressed if more choose to stop using the word capitalism to identify the system of interactions they’re defending or critiquing, or as a stand-in for certain ideals. As noted earlier, both those defending and attacking the term would probably benefit from using other terms for clearer communication and accuracy.

Put another way, it would probably be better to see discussions on very important concepts and ideas with crucial differences and implications for people’s lives refer to a range of different terms like free markets, state-capitalism, neo-mercantilism, corporate power, predominance of hierarchical workplaces, arrangements of classes of managers or skilled individuals as socially dominant, and so on — instead of referring to the same things as capitalism, capitalism, capitalism, capitalism, capitalism, and capitalism.