anarcho-baker:

sugashane:

Yes, I’m absolutely against austerity. I’m also against taxation. I have 100% sympathy towards those that voluntarily engage in trade (capitalists), I have no sympathy towards those that resort to force to obtain things (call them whatever else you want). 

That’s good.

But let me throw a little Carson at you:

Presuppose that a man sticks a gun in your face, and demands you “put your watch in the bag” held by his associate.

His associate has not threatened you with force.

But he still has your property and has acquired it unjustly.

Is it not fair to call him your enemy, and demand it be returned?

That’s how capitalism works. The State wields the gun, the business owners are the bag-men.

But there is more than just coercion here. There is cooperation. There is an exchange for that watch between the man who enacts the force with the gun and the man who holds the bag. 

There is a relationship between the gun wielder and the bag holder outside of what you laid out. They aren’t acting independently. The man with the gun has something to gain by transferring the watch to the man with the bag and the man who receives the watch has to grant something in order to attain the watch. This is where government corruption comes into play. 

The man who collects the money via the man with the gun turns around and uses that money to buy the loyalty of the man with the gun, in order to satisfy the man with the gun and keep him loyal, the process has to continue ad infinitum. The only way to remove the force is to remove the 3rd party (gun holder) from the equation. 

Now the question becomes how the man with the gun got that gun in the first place. He got the gun by deceiving the public into granting him ownership of it. Government is trusting a limited group with the power of many. This is the same power that is used to extort the watch.  

If you really want to break it down, the man with the bag would have never gotten the watch via the man with the gun if the original owner of the watch had not bought the gun for that man in the first place. 

This is why it is called free market capitalism or anarcho-capitalism. Once tainted with government, the rules change because the players change. 

Yes, we have a disagreement on definition here. outside of that we agree through and through. 

Not quite. On austerity, we do.

Okay, go on. 

But you see the State as “frictional”; it interjects itself into ordinary capitalist relations to create power and privilege. 

Yes and no. If the state didn’t exist, it would not be able to interject itself, hence the Anarcho portion of being an AnCap. 

I understand the flaw of capitalism in a state, it would be impossible to prevent corruption. But in a stateless society, so long as it stayed stateless, there would be no corruptible collection of power (gun). 

I say that it is power and privilege alone which enable (just about) all capitalist relations.

You have to explain this further. Are you saying that it is specific knowledge, skill, ability, or other “privileged” criteria that enable people to create valued goods or services? 

There are, to be sure, some small business owners who are technically “capitalists”, I suppose, but clearly not part of that ruling class paradigm.

Again, there can’t be a ruling class in capitalism. That is no longer capitalism, by definition. There can be a ruling class but all actions, even the very slightest have to occur independent of business and economy. But this is improbable and probably impossible, therefore the existence of an elite class is in direct conflict with capitalism. 

Once the ruling class interject force, opinion, etc into the matter, capitalism disappears and only varying forms of corporatism remain. 

But power and privilege in the capitalist system goes deeper than Halliburton and other direct recipients of tax money. Because the State makes a concerted and conscious effort to stamp out self-employment or other forms of non-capitalist commerce or interaction, it creates an army of laborers who have no choice BUT capitalism (as in, wage labor relationships) to survive.

I’ve actually argued that for true free market to exist, one must accept that other forms of economics must exist, competing economics. So you are right, locking people into a specific form of economics is itself coercion. In the same line of thinking I believe that if real democracy were to exist, it would allow for the existence of competing political ideologies. For example, we’d have to promote the existence of communist states, socialist states, and so on and we would leave it up to the people to determine what kind of rule they would live under. 

Your boss may not have coerced you. But coercion still absolutely drove you to him. He isn’t the gunman, he’s the bag-man. But you’re still being cheated and compelled and oppressed and threatened with systematic violence to make you useful to him. 

In the current system, maybe. Probably. But, again, we don’t have a capitalist system. 

But I have a problem with that dispute of definition just like you and I have a problem with how the media or government wrongly defines anarchy. Capitalism is the voluntary exchange of goods and services. You aren’t talking about capitalism.

Capitalism is a system where capitalists wield power.

All actors in capitalism are capitalists. Both consumers and producers. It’s not just a sellers market because even the labor force is selling something. It’s all an exchange of everything. So, yes, capitalists in a real capitalist system wield power because everyone wields power. 

I dispute that free exchange is capitalist.

But it is. 

The reason for this distinction is to question the notion that, without systematic State privilege, the system of corporate hierarchy and wage labor could continue at all.

You’re right, it couldn’t. And that system you describe isn’t capitalism. 

Let’s call a spade a spade so we (mutualists, AnCaps, Volunterists, etc) can all get back on the same damn page and keep fighting the good fight, ya? 

I’d prefer we acknowledged that capitalism is an oppressive system and that the State alone is not the only enemy of those who seek liberation.

“Capitalism” which we live under is oppressive due to the intervention of a coercive government. 

Now tell me, if you removed the collection of power and used as force (government) would the idea of voluntary exchange still be corrupt? 

(via intheoryandinpraxis)