Capitalism is not anarchism

Apr 23

>Libertarians spouting bullshit in response to these posts

Okay…

Apr 22

Why is Capitalism Exploitive?

For anarchists, capitalism is marked by the exploitation of labour by capital. While this is most famously expressed by Proudhon’s “property is theft,” this perspective can be found in all forms of anarchism. For Bakunin, capitalism was marked by an “economic relationship between the exploiter and exploited” as it meant the few have “the power and right to live by exploiting the labour of someone else, the right to exploit the labour of those who possess neither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both.” [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 183] This means that when a worker “sells his labour to an employee … some part of the value of his produce will be unjustly taken by the employer.” [Kropotkin, Anarchism and Anarchist-Communism, p. 52]

At the root this criticism is based, ironically enough, on the capitalist defence of private property as the product of labour. As noted in section B.4.2, Locke defended private property in terms of labour yet allowed that labour to be sold to others. This allowed the buyers of labour (capitalists and landlords) to appropriate the product of other people’s labour (wage workers and tenants) and so, in the words of dissident economist David Ellerman, “capitalist production, i.e. production based on the employment contract denies workers the right to the (positive and negative) fruit of their labour. Yet people’s right to the fruits of their labour has always been the natural basis for private property appropriation. Thus capitalist production, far from being founded on private property, in fact denies the natural basis for private property appropriation.” [The Democratic worker-owned firm, p. 59] This was expressed by Proudhon in the following way:

“Whoever labours becomes a proprietor — this is an inevitable deduction from the principles of political economy and jurisprudence. And when I say proprietor, I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages, — I mean proprietor of the value his creates, and by which the master alone profits … The labourer retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right in the thing he was produced. [What is Property?, pp. 123-4]

“Unfortunately, you can’t vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place.” — Noam Chomsky, Talk titled “Government in the Future” at the Poetry Center of the New York YM-YWHA, February 16, 1970

Apr 16

Is violent revolution required?

discuss

“I have seen people killed by time-bomb setup by fascists. Never caught, never prosecuted. Didn’t matter what I saw, they were protected by the local sheriff and racist politicians.” — Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin

Apr 05

[video]

“You don’t have a peaceful revolution. You don’t have a turn-the-other-cheek revolution. There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. Revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way.” — Malcom X

[video]

Mar 19

“I know some so-called radical will jump up and say that we already call for armed struggle against fascists. Well talk is cheap, and if the anti-fascists were halfway real, ARA leader Spit Newborn would still be walking around, instead of in his grave. Cast aside all illusions about working with the Oath Keepers and right-wing militias. they must be smashed.” — Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin

Mar 13

Where will the revolution begin?