Good post, except one point - you're not a socialist. You're someone who believes in people acting individualistically and through voluntary cooperation. Hell, you sound like you've got similar politics as me. I think people should empower themselves and I'm for voluntary worker's collectives, absolutely. I think being salaried when you could go off and do a project with a team you pick is a bad choice. I'm all for people controlling their own destiny.
But that's not socialism. Socialism has a definition - it was coined and defined by Marx as an intermediate stage on the way to Communism after the proles have seized the means of production by violence. Marx postulated that after heavy social control and violence against the exploiters, all class and social barriers would melt away into paradise.
Turns out, he's wrong. People are different.
You're not a socialist as Marx defined it. If you want to redefine socialism and say you're this redefined thing, okay, sure. But it sounds to me like you're more into free action than socialism. That's a healthy place to be. Marxist-brand socialism is not a healthy place to be, or at least, everything that's remotely tried to be it has gone very wrong.
Indeed. If I recall correctly, Marx spends the first part of the "Communist Manifesto" speaking of forms of socialism that had existed beforehand (even if they weren't called as such).
It's for reasons you said that I'm glad the word "socialism" is being reappropriated from Marx. The world needs to be able to talk about socialist forms of society without this talk being tainted by Marxist theory and the shadow of communist history.
Maybe then I'd be able to talk about economic systems outside of small groups of smart friends, without some guy butting in about how Obama is a communist or how the bank bailouts demonstrate capitalism is broken or how Marx said [insert one of many popular misinterpretations of Marx here]. Maybe we could have intelligent discourse in the media on this subject without the risk of some Tea party douchebag accusing everyone of communism, and people believing it..
> It's for reasons you said that I'm glad the word "socialism" is being reappropriated from Marx. The world needs to be able to talk about socialist forms of society without this talk being tainted by Marxist theory and the shadow of communist history.
The irony of this, of course, is that there is no communist history. The USSR etc. were socialist states[1] (in name if not in practice.)
[1] Socialism as defined by Marx is the transition period after the revolution, before communism is achieved.
I once saw a slogan on a T-shirt that said “Labor creates all wealth”. I would suggest that if your first reaction to that slogan is anywhere in the range from “that’s an exaggeration, but yeah, it’s mostly true” to “HELL YEAH!”, then you are (should be?) a socialist.
The various flavors of socialism, from anarcho-syndicalism to Marxism to Scandinavian-style social democracy, represent different answers to the question of “OK, granted that labor creates the wealth, but in a country with one iron mine, five steel plants, and twenty steel-consuming factories, who decides how resources get distributed from the mines to the steel plants to the factories?”
I can expend enormous amounts of energy engaging in the labor of banging pots and pans together. At the end of the day, I am left only with dented pots and pans. No wealth has been created; in fact, some total wealth may have been lost, as the value of the cutlery has been diminished by damage.
Wealth is created by the transformation of inputs - whether material or not - into an more useful set of outputs. Human labor may or may not be the means by which this transformation is accomplished. But the nature of the transformation can only be defined by human intelligence, and the evolution of technology seems to be shifting the weight of importance even further away from labor and further toward ideas.
I'm not implying any of those things. My point is that the labor theory of value is quite well established in itself, independently from socialism. E.g., Adam Smith was one of its key proponents, and his thought is rather associated with free markets and "invisible hand" capitalism.
But it has no economic significance. People thought the earth was flat a long time ago, and that theory has the same amount of scientific basis.
Seriously, economics is a science and it is easy to demonstrate that a unit of labor time, like and hour worked, does not create the same amount of value.
Specifically, ignoring the power of capital, the labor theory of value would say a carpenter can create as many cars in an hour as a laborer working with a factory of robots.
The reality is, the capital to build the factory changes the value of the labor, thus disproving the labor theory of value.
the labor theory of value would say a carpenter can create as many cars in an hour as a laborer working with a factory of robots
No, it wouldn't, at all, not even kind of.
Depending on the version you took, it would either say that the "real" price of the car coming off the factory floor would be set by the value of all the labor put into producing it (including the cost of the labor of building the factory itself, all the way on back), or that the price would simply be the value of the labor it would save the purchaser.
The labor theory of value has always struck me as self-refuting--if a given good is only worth the labor used to produce it, why not conserve the labor? Profit happens if you produce something worth more than the labor you put into it. This is true whether you're producing profit for yourself (a sandwich is worth more to you than conserving the effort it would take to make the sandwich) or whether you're selling your labor to someone else, who in turn uses that labor to produce profit. (As you point out, this might produce more wealth, since manufacturing labor is more productive in a robotic factory than in a back yard.)
It may be more economically sound for socialists to make a moral argument that profit morally belongs to laborers more than it belongs to the capitalists (in the sense of "people who provide capital"). The economic argument seems to fall down.
The same reasoning refutes the moral argument as well.
If the new wealth created is the difference between the value of the inputs and the value of the outputs, then the key factors that determine whether or not wealth is created are the definition of the output, the definition of process by which the inputs are transformed into outputs, and the allocation of resources (including the assumption of risk) necessary to initiate that process. These functions are undertaken by "capitalists" rather than "laborers".
Labor is an essential input, but in your model, it is not at all responsible for the creation of wealth.
Wrong. Oh so wrong. Please read Marx. Violence is only necessary due to the violence from the rulers. There is no reason to take up arms against them if they do not take up arms against us, and they already do. If when the workers take the wealth that is rightfully theirs they are not attacked then there is no reason for violence.
And thanks for letting the oppressed and exploited know what is morally right for them to do.
You claim he is not a Marxist, yet if you read Capital you get this:
"Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the amount of labour one contributes to society. They generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power andwealth within a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system ofexploitation. They argue that this creates an unequal society that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential."
The very idea of a startup is that you create something that you can sell to people - because they value it - for more than simply the value of the labor you put in. Are you against that? For an American, I'm somewhat to the left, but I think that Marxism in the 20th century has been an abject failure and have to wonder a bit about how anyone, in the face of such evidence, could still espouse such a system. Want to talk about Sweden vs Singapore vs Canada vs Hong Kong? Fine, but Cuba? USSR? No thanks.
I live in a capitalist society. I make do by working in startups. I did not say that startups adhere to socialist ideals.
All those countries you list are not Marxist. Especially not Sweden, Singapore, Canada or Hong Kong. USSR I give you from 1917 to 1920s it was but it was also under constant seige. Cuba made its own form of "socialism" after their revolution. Che grew fed up with the bureaucracy there and left.
> All those countries you list are not Marxist. Especially not Sweden, Singapore, Canada or Hong Kong.
That's right - they're prosperous and relatively free places (with Singapore a bit of an exception) that also manage to spend more or less money taking care of their citizens. They all have various problems and imperfections of different kinds, but generally fall along the continuum of "what works", whereas the USSR and Cuba, which are the closest to your ideals, are failures.
I can see how someone would be attracted to the Nordic system, or a more free-market type of individual would find things to like about, say, Hong Kong. Those countries, with their mixed systems, work in the real world. Marxism didn't and doesn't.
Meh. I haven't thought about this a lot, but I think the whole capitalism vs. socialism dichotomy is useless since the concepts carry so much historical baggage.
Coming from one of the Nordic countries, I would say that I have accepted a social contract that says I pay more in taxes than in other countries, and for those taxes I get "free" healthcare and "free" university education. The contract is that people get something at the beginning and the end of their lives and aren't screwed when they are faced with injury or illness, and pay more than they get during their working years. As someone said on on /., taxes buy me (this particular type of) civilization.
I'd keep that separate from the economic (e.g. private ownership and allocation of resources via somewhat free markets) and legal (e.g. governmental decision making based on majority and strong individual rights) aspects.
Unfortunately, most people confound these different aspects for historical reasons, so they have come to mean "good choices in those factors" and "bad choices in those factors" depending on your POV.
My point was that the Nordic system does work. It strikes certain balances, which may or may not also have negative effects as well, but generally you can say that it's a system that its people have freely chosen and are happy with. Countries that tend towards real Marxism are not really in the "functional" category so much.
Marx didn't coin 'Socialism,' though he did coin the word for a stateless society in which people work for the love of working and share things implicitly. It's 'Communism.' :)
Exactly. There's a big difference between 'Socialism', 'socialism', and 'libertarian socialism.' He's a libertarian socialist. Marx advocated Socialism.
Let's not forget "democratic socialism", which actually works fine as a modern, free society in about a dozen countries which are still very much anti-communist.
And of course there's "glenn beck" socialism, which is mostly an ad hom accusation.
Glenn Beck is an entertainer, and should not be confused in any way with someone with knowledge of social and economic systems. If you take his commentary seriously, you're almost certain to be barking up the wrong tree.
All you say is true, but at least 1/4 of the country does take everything he says extremely seriously. If you want a citation, check the numbers on people who think Obama's a muslim or not a US citizen. I think we can all agree that the guy's a clown but he's definitely influential and relevant.
I don't really see any substantive distinction between this concept of "libertarian socialism" and ordinary libertarianism.
If people are free to pursue their economic goals by voluntary cooperation, it presumes a recognition of underlying property rights. In the absence of external control, many would exercise their rights by monetizing their participation in the economy in order to earn a profit. Many others would adopt a broad "open source" ethos. Most would probably engage in a mix of both, in varying circumstances, and at all levels of formalization.
Freedom and openness lead to healthy variation. It's the philosophies that pursue the universal adoption of a single doctrine that are unnatural and destructive, no matter whether they go by the name of "socialism", "capitalism", or otherwise.
The term "libertarian socialism" is being used here to describe the opinions of the article's author, which focus on an economy rooted in voluntary participation and cooperation.
But how can you have an economy based on voluntary cooperation without the understanding that the voluntary aspect depends on the disposition of property at the discretion of its owners?
If some external authority can overrule you as to how your computer or your farm equipment or your land is used, your choice is between complying with their demands or surrendering your means to participate in the economy altogether; in this scenario, voluntarism is undermined.
Without a concept of private property, a voluntary economy cannot exist.
I'm talking about the actual term, not raganwald's views (and incidentally, my own).
In a Libertarian Socialist society, there would be no external authority. The state doesn't exist. You couldn't own land, but your computer and your farm equipment are possessions, which they make distinct from 'private property.'
If there is no private property, then you don't own your body, as to own your body would mean you owned some private property. If you don't own your body then you are a slave and there is no practical difference between that philosophy and any tyrannical system of government.
It varies by what particular kind of anarchist you're talking about, but the kind of property that's most consistently objected to is a government-enforced notion of "possessions on paper", with a lot more acceptance of things that look more like personal possessions. Say, the difference between living in a house, and owning 10,000 acres of development land in suburban San Diego. The first seems vaguely like a natural sense of possession, in that you live in a place, and you don't want people intruding into your bedroom and such. But owning huge tracts of land as an absentee landlord is more of a purely government-guaranteed notion of property, pretty disconnected from any natural sense of personal possession.
Put differently, property as a way of formalizing personal possession relationships is less objectionable to most anarchists (though many are skeptical of actually formalizing it) than property as a way of creating new kinds of ownership. You can see ownership of your house as just a formal ratification of "I live in this house", but ownership of 10,000 acres of land you've never visited is a pure creation of property-deed databases, and is hard to imagine existing without them.
(Whether that's good or bad, or what to do about it, is another story. I consider myself sympathetic to anarchist critiques and ideals, but putting forth workable concrete proposals is hard.)
Sorry, I forgot to add the caveat: private property means something different in the anarchist context. They make a distinction between 'private property' and 'possession,' your body would be a possession.
All physical property is the same, you exchange labor for it.
This distinction, and the claim that government is hat creates the property seems to come from not thinking e notion of personal property thru.
Basically, at some point, you're advocating taking property away from people ewho have up earned it by creating it or by trading their labor for it.
You need a gang, a mafia, or a government to do that, especially when it's 10,0000 acres somewhere that a collective, or corporation, has put together.
The only difference between a collective owning property and a corporation is that a corporation is allowed to make agreements amongst the members for how the corporation is run.
The existence of a government is not necessary for the existence of corporations.
These are not made up properties created by government, but collections of property made up of possibly thousands of individual explicit agreements between people.
To end that have to stick your nose in as third party and break those agreements that people voluntarily entered into before came around.
Obviously, we're not going to come to any sort of agreement here. And we never were. The point is, your worldview is not the only one. That doesn't make mine any better or worse. Just different.
Thank you for the discussion. I'm not going to respond to you any more.
> Exactly. There's a big difference between 'Socialism', 'socialism', and 'libertarian socialism.' He's a libertarian socialist. Marx advocated Socialism.
Most people - like 90% of people - don't know the difference. Reginald wrote, "I don't like the idea of anyone forcing me to accept socialism" - that's good and healthy. Socialism, unfortunately, now has strong connotations of control involved. If he's for people being able to choose their own life and destiny, I think he'd be best off picking a word or phrase that says that. "Free action" is the closest I know.
Why lock 90%+ of people out of the discussion because they don't know the terminology?
Most people - like 90% of people - don't know the difference.
Upmodded. Wouldn't it be nice if a by-product of our discussion was for one or more people to say to themselves, "Hey, Socialism isn't a single monolithic thing, there are shades of grey involved. The next time someone says that re-organizing health care is Socialist, I will ask them what kind of socialism is involved?"
So any kind of social behaviour is labeled socialism, whether it is a health care plan (how could universal health care ever be construed as a bad thing?) or pensions are leftwing and socialist, therefore bad.
You are asking people to pause and think, good luck with that, even here on HN where the level is way above the rest of the net as soon as politics are mentioned the various polarizing arguments get polished up and recycled as though they were somehow new.
I think it is as much a remnant of the cold war as it is a lack of information and education.
I beg to differ. I'm not going to make claims of a vast media conspiracy, but it is most certainly not the case that the media casts socialism as bad and capitalism as good.
For example, I submit that one of the most hackneyed themes of movies is the greedy capitalist exploiting others or preventing needed initiatives.
As far as I can see, the media consistently mis-frames the economic issues such that today's corporatism (corporate welfare, rent seeking, regulatory capture, etc.) are cast as problems of capitalism, when in fact they are antithetical to that system.
And on the other hand, major facets of our society (e.g., public education, labor unions) that clearly are socialist, are never referenced as such.
In short, I think that the media is just messed up, and anybody on either side of the philosophical divide that accepts media input unfiltered, is going to be horribly confused.
EDIT: I reversed the sense of good/bad in 1st paragraph. It doesn't really matter, since my thesis is that they're completely confused.
And on the other hand, major facets of our society (e.g., public education, labor unions) that clearly are socialist, are never referenced as such.
Don't forget the military. Universal health care, pensions, subsidized housing, job security, etc are all socialist; except somehow when applied to the military.
"You are asking people to pause and think, good luck with that, even here on HN where the level is way above the rest of the net as soon as politics are mentioned the various polarizing arguments get polished up and recycled as though they were somehow new."
Not to mention what happens when someone says "Python is better than Ruby" or vice versa... :)
how could universal health care ever be construed as a bad thing?
Universal healthcare construes long waits and inadequate care to me. The universal health care slogan should be: "The efficiency of the DMV, the compassion of the IRS".
The current state of health care in the US is definitely sub-optimal, but it is better than one run by the government.
"Universal healthcare" != "government-run healthcare". Under the US plan for universal healthcare, the government does not take over the healthcare providers. Rather, it is more tightly regulating insurance companies and businesses to increase the number of citizens with health insurance; and it is increasing the size of its own insurance plans to fill the gap for those who are still uninsured.
The healthcare continues to be provided by current providers.
That's a good point. I think in part that is because of the strength and amount of lobbying going on in the US and the many cross ties between business and government.
I'm not aware of any other country where lobbyists have that much influence.
Shocking, really the amount of money that goes in to that:
Unfortunately, the people who are saying things like "re-organizing health care is Socialist" are also the type of people would wouldn't care that there is a distinction that might be relevant. They have conflated socialism and communism, and there can be no reasonable types of communism.
Most people - like 90% of people - don't know the difference.
But when someone tries to articulate it, you first (incorrectly) attribute the idea to Karl Marx, and then try to dissuade him from even using the word. 'Free action' is a useless term in this context, because it captures nothing of the cooperative or mutual elements that Raganwald is discussing.
Socialism has a definition - it was coined and defined by Marx
The definition of socialism has evolved since then. Raganwald is a socialist, in the same sense in which the ruling parties in many Western European countries call their form of government a 'social democracy'. It's only in the US that 'socialism' is a scary word that nobody wants to be associated with. To US standards, 75% of Western Europe votes for socialist parties.
That's actually a significant reason I am a capitalist. A capitalist, free-market system is one in which you are free to set up whatever little organizations you want, and they live and die on their own merits. There is no contradiction in running a highly socialist or even actively communist co-op in a capitalistic society, because it is not part of the capitalism idea that you must run that way from top to bottom.
This is not a conventional definition of socialism or capitalism. I don't have a problem with that per se, since the terms have long since become so fuzzy as to be useless without definition within an essay, but it is a little odd to see you proudly labeling what would more conventionally be called libertarianism or capitalism as "socialism". In this context, I'm not sure this makes any sense.
You’re missing the part of capitalism that deals with capital.
If your organization is, say, an automobile company, you can’t just get together with your friends and say “hey, let’s make cars and sell them”. You need a factory building, you need tools, etc., etc., long before you see any cars. The difference between capitalism and socialism, broadly speaking, is the difference between depending on private or public money to finance that initial investment.
Efficiency is not everything. If you steal something from me, it's incredibly efficient for me to come over to your house with a gun, but nobody would argue that it's moral. We should be looking to make a society that's morally acceptable first, and then optimizing for efficiency afterwards.
Secondly, while capitalism is efficient on paper, it often isn't in the real world. There's no such thing as a free market, and nepotism, politicking, and incompetence still run rampant. Every societal system has its share of problems.
I've come to believe that efficiency itself is moral. A system that perfectly adheres to all the nice-sounding deontological principles you can name, but leaves everyone in poverty, is less moral than a system with a few dashes of violence and injustice that leaves nearly everyone much better off.
I'd certainly agree that I have fairly utilitarian leanings. I _used_ to be super hardcore minarchist Libertarian. Maximizing everyone's happiness is a worthy goal.
I'm just not 100% sure what the best way to get there is. I don't think that just because the system kind of works okay now means that it will forever.
I _used_ to be super hardcore minarchist Libertarian.
Yeah, me too. And I think you're still making the same mistake I used to, in a different sense--you're picking nice-sounding, moralistic idealism over pragmatism.
Of the systems so far tested, some sort of Stateful mixed economy seems the best.[1] Of the parameters you can adjust in that system, we have observed various effects. The way to find whatever political truths we can is the same as the way to find other truths--empiricism. Empiricism is hard, especially with political systems, but it's better than moralistic or idealistic handwaving of any variety. It's not terribly convincing to philosophize about a political ideal. Why not take what we've got and find evidence-based ways of improving it?
[1] Of the systems so far untested, we have no data. They might turn out to be complete disasters, impossible to implement, or so strange almost no one outside a few logically-minded dogmatists would possibly agree to them. I would actually support voluntary social experiments in setting up different political systems, but you would have to make them compatible in some way with the status quo without hurting the validity of the experiment. Large scale nature preserves with small numbers of primitivists, protected by an existing State from redevelopment of the land or hostile violence from anti-primitivists, would be one example of this. Another is similar to something interestingly adopted by China: the "special economic zone".
"it is not part of the capitalism idea that you must run that way from top to bottom"
Well then it wouldn't be capitalism all the way down? It would only be capitalism on the outside, socialism on the inside.
Capitalism is a system in which individuals are rewarded according to what the market will give them. If you don't do that you simply don't have capitalism.
Since Capitalism ultimately depends on the social relationship between owners and workers, where owners purchase the output of worker's activity for less than they sell it to an outside party that desires that output, accumulating and reinvesting the difference ( i.e. Capital ) I think that is a much more important attribute to focus on than the means Capitalist organizations use to determine prices. ( Markets vs State Planning ). The argument you are repeating is a distraction from this central fact.
From the point of view of the 95% who have no Capital, the 95% who only have their ability to exchange labor for currency, life is fundamentally the same. >40 hours a week traded to somebody else for the currency I need to pay for food, shelter, and entertainment. The value I create in that 40 hours is always greater than I was paid, and the difference is always accumulated by a better connected and more socially powerful minority. Markets and State Planning are superfluous details in this equation.
I don't think there really is a popular definition for capitalism. People who use the word always use it to mean what they want it to mean, usually in the context of praising or criticizing capitalist society.
The best definition (in my ever humble opinion) is that capitalism is a society where the means of production live in a free market, which is completely consistent with what the GP said.
I believe that the common definition in most folks' minds is that capitalism refers to the system we have today in the USA, where the government rewards business interests with handouts, protective regulations, and the like.
This is not capitalism, though. What people are experiencing and objecting to is corporatism [1].
I believe that if people would give real capitalism a chance, the result would be positive. But as it stands now, the economics are too intertwined with the politics. In order to successfully implement real capitalism, the power that the state wields to erect regulations that can be subverted would have to be stripped: we'd have to neuter the government. Clearly the government would never allow that to happen.
It can be argued that as soon as capital begins to concentrate, the benefactors begin to affect policy making to their advantage. Thus you end up with the current system.
Just as attempts at establishing communism end up with coercion and purges of dissent, theoretical capitalism ends up with powerful interest groups in practice.
"Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the amount of labour one contributes to society"
How do you measure merit and the amount of labour one contributes to society? The only fair way I know of is capitalism where people get to vote with their money on whether or not you are providing value or not.
I would posit that merit is the amount of value you give to another. Minus marketing and any government interference, capitalism rewards individuals for the value they contribute to society.
It is also necessary to separate capitalism from corporatism. The latter is what most people are against when they say that capitalism is evil. There is no such thing as a corporation in terms of capitalism.
There is one flaw in capitalism that I am aware of but I still think it is the best system. That flaw is that it tends to reward those with capital. To have capital is to have an advantage over someone of equal ability. Over time power tends to consolidate into a few select organizations / individuals.
> Minus marketing and any government interference, capitalism rewards individuals for the value they contribute to society.
I suppose I don't buy this as an a priori equality. One problem is that when there are very large flows of capital, one can often make more money by skimming very small amounts off the top, than by creating new things. That's one reason finance is a better route to wealth than tech startups, even though tech startups create a lot more value for society: because when hundreds of billions of dollars are moving around, you only need to find a way to pocket a very small amount of it to get fabulously wealthy. More generally, rent-seeking, i.e. maneuvering yourself into a position where you can be sort of a private-sector version of the taxman, is a viable way to make money.
Plus, "minus marketing" is a pretty big caveat. It's quite possible to be successful in a "black-hat capitalist" sort of way, by not creating products that contribute to society, but instead by swindling society out of its money by getting people to buy your crap (even in tech, there's a whole affiliate-marketing underworld of tricking people into buying shitty ebooks). And, to pick a third problem, the economy is a rather complex dynamical system, and like many dynamical systems, is not driven purely by fundamentals (real supply/demand), but also by feedback loops and attractors within the system. So sometimes you get some really weird ways of making money that have nothing to do with anyone providing value to anyone else, but have more to do with asset bubbles and debt spirals and other such market patterns.
Not that markets don't often work, and might work even better without the government propping up the corporate form. But I certainly don't think we can a priori say that money transfers are a direct measure of value. I mean, we'd live in a pretty coincidentally amazing universe if it just happened that the economy, this very complex dynamical system that does not care about human concerns like "value" or "society" or "ethics", happened to end up 100% aligning with them. I think instead it's an open question when they align and when they don't, and if there's anything we can do to make markets align with value-to-society better.
I think you put it very clear:
1)The good about capitalism is that it rewards high squiled-hard workers individuals fairly based on objective results, not on ideology and prejudices(subjective) like socialism.
2)The bad is that "everybody love their children, family and friends". That means those near those highly successful people get unfair advantage(nepotism).
Given that no political system has been able to improve (2)(who were those that had the privileges to cruise the Volga, feed-educate better their children in SU but communist party members? who has the power and the companies in P.R.C today but comunist party members?) I prefer capitalism.
When you work out the consequences, "Libertarian socialism" is a terrible name for the concept described by Reginald. It feels more like a Capitalist hypothesis:
Hypothesis:
A group of workers jointly shouldering the risk and rewards of a venture
is more efficient than a "traditional" company.
This is true at small-scale: startups seem to be structured like collectives, and they regularly outperform large companies within a niche. However, large companies never take this structure. That suggests either there's a point where this becomes impractical, or nobody's been crazy enough to try before.
Are you aware of the history of the term 'libertarian?' It was originally used to describe anarchism, which is socialist. Statist and stateless socialism are very different beasts, and the term 'libertarian socialism' has a pretty long history of use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
But despite some of his terms, he's not advocating his views on the level of an entire society. Just at the scale of a single collective or company. He seems fine with the idea of this collective competing and winning within a Capitalist framework, which seems antithetical to much of the article you linked.
It's true. I don't claim to speak for raganwald. And I myself am much closer to he than to the article. Not everyone's beliefs are black and white... there are plenty of people that support, for example, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act yet still call themselves 'capitalists.'
Socialism means using violence in the form of the state to deny people the power over their own bodies, or the power to own private property.
Having a state, by definition is incompatible with anarchism.
The whole "libertarians were orginally socialist" idea is just the latest in the strign of socialists attempting to coopt every movement.
That someone thinks you can have anarchism and socialism at the same time boggles the mind. Anarchism means no government while socialism is a form of government incompatible with allowing free will.
> The whole "libertarians were orginally socialist" idea is just the latest
Unless you consider 1840 the 'latest,' you're wrong. (EDIT: Sorry, 1840 was 'anarchist,' 1890 was 'libertarian.' The American version of 'libertarian' didn't come into use until 1950: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Etymology)
You're thinking only of state socialism, stateless socialism is totally different. And the basic definition of socialism says nothing about denying anyone anything:
> Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.
The only way to have "common" ownership is for the thugs who decide they represent the people to steal the property, generally at gunpoint.
Libertarianism predates the 1840s. I've been hearing this argument for the past 20 years, and it is nonsense. Socialists seem to recognize no property rings even in the terms they use, but that is just dishonesty at some point.
> The use of the word 'libertarian' to describe a set of political positions can be tracked to the French cognate, "Libertaire", which was coined in 1857 by French anarchist communist Joseph Déjacque who used the term to distinguish his libertarian communist approach from the mutualism advocated by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
Not only are you ignorant, and unwilling to be enlightened, but your are dishonest as well.
Bottom line is, you want to use violence to make ores subsidize your lifestyle, and that makes you scum. Arguing with your rationalizations of this ideology is pointless because you don't have any arguments, just propaganda. It really is pathetic.
I don't buy the analogy. Even if you work for a company that fosters what he refers to as a socialist work ethic that company is still operating in a capitalist system, subject to the usual market forces. What he is describing sounds more like a collegiate environment. The nature of software development, and other similar knowledge economy industries, naturally demand a more collaborative & collegiate approach to getting things done, but they are all fundamentally driven by market forces & constraints such as funding & sales.
> The nature of software development, and other similar knowledge economy industries, naturally demand a more collaborative & collegiate approach to getting things done, but they are all fundamentally driven by market forces & constraints such as funding & sales.
You have heard of this open source thing, right? I don't think that you can argue that the open source ethos has anything to do with capitalism. In fact, I would say that Stallman's views on software are pretty overtly communist, as they contest the very concept of private ownership of a piece of software.
And yet, without the freedom to won the software you create, you cannot give it away. Open source s capitalst because it is based on the presumption that the creator owns the sotftware and can determine the license to it.
If stall man really believes nobody can own software, then stallman believes that all programmers should be slaves, unable to profit from their own labor.
Copyleft was conceived as a hack of the copyright system, a necessary evil because placing a work in the public domain allows other people to profit from the work. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft:
As Stallman deemed it impractical in the short term to eliminate current copyright law and the wrongs he perceived it perpetuated, he decided to work within the framework of existing law; he created his own copyright license, the Emacs General Public License,[8] the first copyleft license.
There is nothing that keeps an open source developer from profiting from their labor. Some are employed by a company explicitly to work on OSS, or contract with a company to implement a desired feature. In fact, an open source developer can _only_ profit from their labor, and not at all from their "capital".
"self-organized collectives" are abundant in western capitalism, we usually refer to them as corporations. The terms and agreements between parties in these organizations vary but many fit your ideal.
The philosophical difference between socialism and capitalism, is the willingness to accept violence and coercion as a means to mold society to a specific vision.
Which of those two philosophies do you think accepts "violence and coercion as a means to mold society to a specific version"? From the context, I'm guessing that you're referring to socialism, and thereby claiming that capitalism rejects violence and coercion- my apologies if I'm misunderstanding you.
Assuming that I am interpreting your comment correctly, though, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you don't know much about the history of the twentieth-century US foreign policy, especially regarding Latin America. We have a long history of using violence and coercion, either directly or via proxies, in order to promote our capitalist philosophies. "Interestingly," we seem to choose to do so primarily in situations where we have significant financial interests... anyway, here's some reading you might find educational:
Note that I'm most definitely not saying that socialism, as a philosophy, has cleaner hands than capitalism. Speaking in terms of political ideologies, the take-home lesson of the abattoir that was the 20th century is that putting one's faith in a political ideology of any kind is asking for trouble.
Firstly, my comment was qualified with the word 'philosophical' not 'practical'.
Secondly, many people have different understandings of capitalism, and pop culture has continued to remove meaning from the word, which is probably why you are having a hard time understanding my comment.
The examples you cite are perfect examples of the opposite of capitalism: socialized institutions (or the government directly) using violence as a means to an end, either political or economic in nature.
For reference here is the jist from Wikipedia, which leaves a little to be desired but is still pretty decent:
"Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately owned and operated for profit; decisions regarding supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are not made by the government; Profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses."
"The philosophical difference between socialism and capitalism, is the willingness to accept violence and coercion as a means to mold society to a specific vision."
I am fairly certain violence and coercion is orthogonal to socialism v capitalism.
It is very simple. A purely capitalistic society can contain, tolerate, and even encourage totally egalitarian organizations in any form the participants deem prudent. A purely socialist society on the other hand cannot tolerate capitalistic organizations in its midst.
Violence is embedded in the assumption that society can be organized in a socialist manner.
The trouble with arguing about "Purely X" for any value of X is that there are no practical examples of X for us to examine. I don't have an option of living in a purely capitalistic society. Canada is somewhat democratically socialist, but not purely socialist. There are small scale startups, bu t I am not aware of any gazillion person corporations where everyone is paid for what they really contribute. Even when bonus is a major component of someone's monetary compensation, the highest rewards go to those who game the system.
In the end, arguing Capitalism vs. Socialism tends to devolve into the No True Scotsman fallacy: "Socialism sucks because you die of old age before getting an MRI." "Oh, I got one for my knee." "Well, Ontario isn't a TRUE Socialist society."
And: "Capitalism sucks because if a corporation succeeds in exploiting people, it makes money. But if it fails, they go to congress and rob the people through taxes of their money, e.g. the Wall Street bail-out." "That was not TRUE capitalism at work, that doesn't count!"
Agreed, which is why I tried to couch it in 'philosophical' argument. Discussing the various factions of socialism, anarchism, libertarianism, etc is always fun, but rarely leads to anything productive.
I am just glad that we currently can organize rather freely (even if we are forced to give over nearly half of our labor to war, health and retirement ponzi schemes, subsidizing heterosexual marriage, or whatever it is that you disagree with personally), and think that everyone should spend energy on making that more possible, and more neutral within our current framework(s) rather than trying to decide how people should organize themselves in the end.
Libertarian socialists and other anarchists would say that private property is violent; it requires that there be societal hierarchy to work, and for few to hold power over many. (oh, and don't forget that their definition of 'private property' is different than yours, because it's more narrow. They separate 'possession' and 'private property' into two different things.)
Captialists could describe the state control of hardcore statist socialism to be violent, as it's also few holding power over the free association of the general public.
Capitalism, Socialism, Libertarianism, Anarchism, Conservatism, etc... these labels are now so confused and bereft of concrete meaning that their use is largely counterproductive.
If you want to say something political, say it, don't stick a label on your forehead.
These labels are one bereft of meaning because socialists arevcosntantly attempting to coopt them. They havev even cooped the republican party.
Libertarian means you do not believe in the initiation of force. This is incompatible with socialism which, it's core, requires the use of force to make people live a certain way.
The term libertarian has clear meaning, and all of the others will, so long as we do not tolerate their misuse and call it out when they are misused.
This is incompatible with socialism which, it's core, requires the use of force to make people live a certain way.
You can't really slip that in like everyone agrees it's a fact. Where does it say that Socialism requires force? The last few anarchists I spoke to describe capitalism as requiring force, because you need to enforce the notion of the ownership of things.
For example, what force is required to copy a movie? The force is all on the side of lawyers and policemen arresting people to compel them to treat a very, very long number as property.
> For example, what force is required to copy a movie? The force is all on the side of lawyers and policemen arresting people to compel them to treat a very, very long number as property.
Strawman. Libertarianism does not defend the idea of IP.
Capitalism is a system whereby people are allowed to accumulate capital, and then with the voluntary consent of other people, form collectives, called corporations, where that capital and the labor of all the people is deployed to produce products and services with the hopes of generating profits to be distributed to the members of the collective based on the prior agreement for distribution.
Socialists generally seem to feel that this is unfair because the people who put up capital are rewarded. But at any rate, if you do Not have an external force dictating, at the point of gun, how people are to be organized, they can organize as I described above, and historically have.
Since this organization is a capitalist one, socialists must use violence to stop it.
There are two ways violence can be imposed. In one, you are denuding yourself or your partner or property. In the other you are attempting to steal the life or property of another.
I draw a moral distinction between shooting the guy who is raping my wife, and you coming along and redistributing the profits of my company, which you didn't help create, along the lines of your ideals.
You want to form a company that under different ideals, then that's fine by me... So long as everyone involved consents.
There is nothing in a capitalist society to stop you from having such a collective.
However, socialism is based on the idea that capital has no value and only labor does, and thus you must use guns to prevent anyone from accumulating too much.
socialism is based on the idea that capital has no value and only labor does, and thus you must use guns to prevent anyone from accumulating too much.
Nowhere in my essay did I say anything about the use of guns. I am not an expert on socialism, but I don't recall anyone I have met who identifies as a socialist telling me to grab a gun and use violence.
Therefore, I am going to leave you to argue with yourself since you are spending all of your words telling ME what socialism means and then explaining why YOUR definition of socialism is bad.
Since people like to argue definitions, here's something to chalk on the board at the coffee house:
GIVEN: Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism, and sometimes left libertarianism) is a group of political philosophies which promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production.
RESOLVED: Belief in the abolition of software patents and the use of FOSS software to create start-ups is a Libertarian Socialist view.
I think you'd find quite a bit of support from us Europeans, actually – even the ones, like me, who are probably a bit to the right of you politically. I'm not a card-carrying member of any political party, but the American rhetoric on socialism is just absurd.
(Full disclosure: my sympathies are on the market wing of mainstream European liberalism.)
Socialism as used in Europe means social democracy, means free enterprise with regulation and a robust welfare system, and includes the cooperative movement – and you'd be hard pressed to call the third largest private company in the UK (the John Lewis Partnership: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership) some kind of entryist plot.
Obama a socialist? Don't make us laugh: he's barely a liberal. In Britain he'd be a Tory...
Broadly speaking, in American politics today the term is used to imply the increased scope, reach, and size of government, inevitably followed by an increase in taxes, It's not a textbook definition of socialism, but it boils down an aversion to the state controlling an increasing percentage of our personal wealth.
Whereas the alternative, conservatism promulgated by Republicans, implies the increased scope, reach and size of government (armies + war), inevitably followed by an increase in deficits (which "don't matter", but the redirected resources, even if only measured in terms of people employed, do make a difference in productive, rather than destructive, output).
But seriously, this thread has already devolved into criticisms of state socialism, which are legitimate. State socialism sucks. You and I are talking about something else, but will inevitably get drowned out by 'the s-word.'
I don't have the right to curate the direction of a discussion on my post any more than Big S Socialists have the right to tell me that I am not allowed to write code because the collective would experience a greater benefit if I were to stick to writing educational pamphlets about writing code.
My own 2p worth is that these notions of socialism or capitalism or liberalism are 19th/20th century inventions, and that the sorts of issues which are going to be arising in future are not going to fit well into any of these existing boxes. Probably it's not a good idea to become too fixated upon these ideologies from the past. As evidence I'd cite the declining public interest in party politics and the rise of single issue pressure groups.
Also, Americans often confuse socialism for communism, and don't realize that more moderate non-tyrannical centre left forms of socialism are possible, with plenty of examples existing in Europe.
It is easy to assume that your opponents are ignorant, but i can speak pretty clearly to this point-- even the least aware and educated Americans recognize that european socialism, while it didn't become as tyrannical as communist states, still results in more government control, and lower economic growth, than the comparatively less socialist USA.
"That isn't socialism, but boy does it feel like workers being more efficient when they seize the means of production—the compiler—rather than being coerced or exploited."
If you're interested in the notion of putting the means of production in the hands of the workers, you might be interested in some of the works of G. K. Chesterton and Hilair Belloc when they discuss what they called 'Distributism.' They're not full of much practical advice but they do provide an ideological alternative to the all or nothing ideologies of Socialism and Free-Market Capitalism.
"That isn't socialism, but boy does it feel like workers being more efficient when they seize the means of production—the compiler—rather than being coerced or exploited."
How are workers being "exploited" just based on the fact that they working for someone else? We all have choices in this world. If you feel you aren't getting paid enough, leave.
"They argue that this creates an unequal society that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential."
If I have more money than you, it instantly makes our opportunities "unequal". This is the problem with socialism. It creates "equality" by limiting everyone's success. This works well for people that aren't interested in succeeding. I think of it like those group projects in school where 2 people of 5 would get stuck doing all the work, while the rest took the same amount of credit.
"I have no idea if the folks laid off from auto-makers want to do that, but I do know that I and many of the programmers I know seem happy with the idea of working in small teams in a collaborative and egalitarian manner"
I see people talking about this every couple of years. If you really want to start something like this, don't talk about it, do it. Many people in history have tried exactly what you are proposing and this crazy thing called human nature gets in the way every time.
The idea of a group owned collaborative sounds great on paper, until you actually attempt to do it. Who decides how much each person gets paid? If it's based on performance, what kind of performance? How many widgets or made?
You mentioned a "co-operative workers' councils". How is this any different than a president/ceo of the company? These "councils" will have more power over the regular workers, so it doesn't really make everyone "equal".
I've worked at a few companies that were run by committee. Even small decisions were very painful to make.
Are you presenting this as an argument with my article? I am confused, as you seem to be arguing most of the time with other people's words and not my own.
I will respond to one thing you wrote, That does not mean I agree with or even understand anything else in your comment.
How are workers being "exploited" just based on the fact that they working for someone else? We all have choices in this world. If you feel you aren't getting paid enough, leave.
Is exploitation incompatible with freedom? You seem to be saying that exploitation does not exist since people appear to have choices.
That isn't my understanding of what the word "exploitation" means. If I'm wrong, please suggest the word that describes what I am thinking, and I'll update the essay.
"Are you presenting this as an argument with my article? I am confused, as you seem to be arguing most of the time with other people's words and not my own."
You seem to like to add other people's words in your article as to convey a certain message. When I argue against that message, you tell me that you are confused.
If you don't want anything to do with the thoughts you quoted, why put them there at all? You should stand by your opinions.
"Is exploitation incompatible with freedom? You seem to be saying that exploitation does not exist since people appear to have choices."
No. Some people are truly exploited. You laid it out there as a blanked statement. As if everyone is exploited in the current system.
I think you have certain ideas. I'm fine with your opinions just as they are, I honour you for that. However, in an essay where I start by saying that I'm erroneous in describing myself as a Socialist and end by saying that I'm a socialist for sufficiently libertarian values of socialism, what are we to make of my quoting a generic definition of Big S Socialism in the middle? I stated what I believe quite clearly. What I suggest you do is carry on arguing against Big S Socialism. Nothing wrong with disputing it. And if you like, you can say things like "Reginald quotes Wikipedia as saying that Socialism is ____. This is clearly a bad idea because _____."
Now as to "standing by my opinions," ask your friends in the neighborhood about me. They will tell you I have no problem standing by my opinions, even when they are unpopular. But I should make something perfectly clear: This essay describes what I like. At no time do I claim that you or anybody else will be better off if things go this way or that way, just that I will like it.
So really, there is very little value to your trying to persuade me that the world will be worse off if Health Care is nationalized or what-not. I am not writing an essay about how to make the world a better place, just about how to make my world a better place.
I believe the best you can do to oppose my views is to convince me that I personally wouldn't like working on small, self-organizing software teams. Have at it.
He really should have made it about definitions since more than half of the commenters here seem to have no idea what communism is and, thereby, misunderstand socialism (as defined by Reginald) and Socialism (as defined by Marx).
Great to read this. I too am a socialist and frequent Hacker News and work in startups. I'm a member of the International Socialist Organization, http://socialistworker.org/, if you happen to be in the US and interested in a group and not yet part of one.
I see you ended up getting people to argue definitions when they don't understand them anyway :).
Like lionhearted, "means of production by violence". Violence is only necessary when those with the real rights to the means of production (the wealth they created) are attacked... So no, that is not part of Marx's theory.
Marxist brand socialism is the healthiest place to be if you are for freedom and the end of oppression!
It is sad how little people care to learn of Marxism, instead happily believe the lies they are told.
Me and my friends make a startup, we make lots of money. You want to tax it? Do you want to force us to hire employes on terms that you dictate?
These are sincere questions-- what effect would your socialist system have on our little voluntary startup? If the answer is none, how is it different from capitalism? What if we got big?
If you want to force us to hire certain people, pay them a certain amount, or prevent us from getting big-- all policies advocated by various socialist organizations-- how is this not an end of freedom and oppression?
Meanwhile I don't care if you form a collective, and you have whatever socialist policies in your collective, so long as all the participants are voluntary.
I've yet to meet a socialist or a socialist organization that would extend the same courtesy.
Because letting people be free from oppression means letting them pool capital, which is generally a problem for socialists, isn't it?
First let me argue not as a socialist but pretending I'm a liberal. Are you saying that when you make a startup and sell a product you gain nothing from public services during this time? There is no reason for you to be taxed to provide those services?
There will be no 'startups' in the sense you think of, meaning dealing with capital. Decisions of production will be done democratically in communities.
If you want to think of yourself as an artisan that could be argued that you could still have your "startup". But you will not be collecting capital from investors and enslaving workers to a wage.
It is a very different way of thinking and living and can be hard to grasp. But so was capitalism and capitalism was a very progressive movement in its beginning. But it runs its course as it destroys the planet and human interaction and continues to concentrate more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
I see, so you justify the use of violence, eg, taxation backed by laws and menvwith guns, based on the erroneous assumption that the victims of your violence want the so called services you claim to provide.
Well at least your no longer pretending to advocate for freedom from oppression.
Fwiw, every capitalist would happily pay for the services they used, they do it all the time by going to other companiesvand hiring them or buying products.
The whole taxation racket is awoke, tax first then justify it because the services-- which would be provided cheaper and more efficiently by a free market, of course-- are used because were forced to use them.
Post hoc, ergo proctor hoc.
Reality is, this is all rationalizations. You wantbot use vioelence to comp ell others to live according to your dictates, and this is why all socialist system save turned into tyrannies.
Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the amount of labour one contributes to society
The thing is, this makes no sense at all, especially not here on HN, where one of our core assumptions is that people should be compensated on how productive they are, not the hours they put in. Why should anyone care about the amount of labour, as opposed to the value of the end product?
One of the beliefs I share with many (though certainly not all) of the regulars on HN is that upmods should be given based on the merit of comment as measured by it contribution to the discussion. That isn't the same thing as whether I agree with the comment, and there are many comments I upmod even though I disagree.
So when it comes to PG's beliefs, I'm sure you can appreciate that I might admire Paul The Man and admire one of Paul's essays to the point of forwarding it around, even though I might disagree with it in part or even in whole.
Being specific, I see compensation as being one of many different ways we try to game people into doing good things. Some people respond to this carrot, some ignore it and are motivated by other things, and some game the system by lying or cheating their way into getting more carrots, like Mark Hurd slashing HP's R&D budget then pocketing millions for raising their profits.
A word like "should" is ambiguous. Does it mean "Should because that is Right with a capital R?" Or does it mean "Should because it is the best way to achieve some larger social goal?"
All that being said, may I offer these two statements and ask you if it is possible for someone to be an S-ist and an H-ist?
S-ists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit
H-ists believe people should be compensated on how productive they are
One of the beliefs I share with many (though certainly not all) of the regulars on HN is that upmods should be given based on the merit of comment as measured by it contribution to the discussion.
So, you're saying that the currency of upmods should be distributed based on the value of what was produced, rather than the time and effort (or, "amount of labour") it took to produce it? ;)
My essay justifying paying programmers a standard hourly wage is right next to the place where I wrote words advocating the practice.
Since I don't advocate that practice, there is no need for an essay on the subject.
I cannot read your mind, but are you making certain assumptions about what I believe based on the fact that I quoted certain sections of the wikipedia article about Socialism?
Please keep in mind that my words in this essay are quite explicit in stating that my beliefs are not Big S Socialism. I state that at the top and the bottom.
OK, but the title is "Hello, my name is Reginald and I am a Socialist" (big S) then you go on to make the distinction. So I am confused about what you are actually advocating here.
FWIW reading the rest of the comments on this page I guess you'd be more like a syndicalist than a socialist.
First of all, I didn't say that I agree with Reginald. I'm just trying to make sure we can draw the line between respecting pg and hero-worship. If that's not where you're coming from, great!
To go back to your previous argument though, I don't view agreeing with pg (or even having read pg) as a pre-requisite to fitting in on HN. Quite the opposite in fact. I think someone who blindly accepts everything that pg writes is likely to not fit in to HN. Perhaps I jumped the gun in assuming that you feel otherwise. In fact, I hope that's the case!
Yeah, I just mentioned that as a way of saying, this point about compensation for input (time spent on something) vs output (the value of that something) has been made in great depth already.
Yes, personally while reading the comments, I sometimes just think "This person is using conventional pro-capitalist arguments" and move on. Similar thoughts might occur if I were reading technical communications as a mathematician in Soviet Russia, a developer of early computers for the US government, or engineer of weapons systems under feudalism.
That doesn't necessarily mean I reject those arguments; but it doesn't mean I accept them either. Given the state of the world, it makes sense that the ideology here reflects the capitalist, masculine perspectives in the Californian software industry.
Really? The onus here is on you to show there is a case for hours or lines of code to set pay, not the value of the end product. Go on, link me to some comments of people advocating that. Or you will have to accept that this really is a common belief.
Sounds you like feel we've already covered this ground thanks to pg's essays and should take the conclusions reached therein as a foundation for discussions on HN: "I thought this was already settled."
I sense a strong belief in Progress and the power of logic to uncover immutable Truth.
"I don't like the idea of anyone forcing me to accept socialism"
Haha, so you are not socialist at all!!
Socialist is forcing others to accept socialist, in fact is forcing (other)individuals to give money to their "social causes", that could be different from those individuals have.
Is not asking politely: would you mind giving part of your money to this poor people so they can study?
No, it is taking by force his money if he doesn't want to, and consider it "a right". As my grandpa who lived in soviet rusia said when I asked what is socialism, he said: It is being generous with other people's money.
If you accept individual freedoms to choose, you are not socialist, not more that anybody else here.
> Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.
Nowhere does this say "take my money and give it to other people." For example, anarchism is a socialist political philosophy, but abhors the state, and all forms of hierarchical control.
For anarchism to actually eliminate violence, it has to have some mechanism to protect society from Genghis Khan and Jack the Ripper.
Statistically, Genghis Khan will eventually be born somewhere outside your society and eventually show up at your doorstep with hordes of horseback archers, and you can either surrender, join his empire, and pay taxes (ending your experiment in anarchism) or have your entire society destroyed almost to the last man, leaving a few survivors to warn other societies of the tale (ending your experiment in anarchism).
If you had the only anarchist society in a world of states, you could probably freeload on those states to stop any full-scale Genghis Khan from getting too powerful. Let's hope your experiment in anarchism is landlocked between several states who will leave you alone. You could allow for voluntary defense, and theoretically handwave away defensive violence against people outside your society as "doesn't count". But on some level you have to realize your society depends upon some violence to survive.
Jack the Ripper will show up inside your society and fuck up your voluntary social contract all on his own, when he goes around killing disreputable women (luckily, many forms of anarcho-socialism lack money and thus would have no prostitution per se). In that case you would need some sort of violence (possibly voluntary on the part of the violent people) to either kill Jack the Ripper, or lock him up in a cage, or kick him out of your society. If you do that, you have violence within your society--if you don't, you have violence within your society in the form of Jack the Ripper.
It turns out all of human history has been an extended experiment in solving these very problems, and the only steady state, as discovered in parallel by nearly every culture on earth, is in fact the State[1]. At best you can have voluntarism within the State, but you cannot sustain anarchism without the State.
[1] Existing primitivists, such as the bushmen of Africa, have largely been forced out of their traditional lifestyle by the State. If there are primitivists who do, in fact, maintain their traditional lifestyle, they only do so under the explicit protection of the State, as discussed in the freeloading example above. In other words, it's still an anarchism that requires the State to function, which is a contradiction in terms.
Hunter-gatherers are not necessarily anarchists. Many of the greatest empires in world history were built by hunter-gatherers, who on account of their hunting and gathering made much better soldiers than people living in civilizations. They ate a more balanced diet, got more exercise, knew how to kill things, and knew how to kill things as a team. Horseback archery isn't a skill you get to hone much as a farmer. If you have that basic skillset, civilizations make pretty good targets once you run low on animals.
> Statistically, Genghis Khan will eventually be born somewhere outside your society and eventually show up at your doorstep
It's true. We need to look no further than the Spanish Revolution to find a great example in history of this.
Then again, the Most Powerful Military In The World is still playing in the sand, almost a decade later. A ragtag band of individuals is still fending them off.
As far as Jack the Ripper goes, I also agree with you. This is why I'm only sympathetic to anarchism, and not a full-blown anarchist. I have my own questions about how these kinds of situations would be resolved.
Anarchism is inherently capitalist, because without the state, there would be nobody to stop capitalists from deploying capital to do startups. There would be nobody ot impose your socialist values to make everyone act the way you dictate.
I'd suggest that you do a little more reading on this topic, because you're grossly misinformed. Wikipedia is a decent intro, and "An Anarchist FAQ" is a very long and thorough discussion of the topic: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html
Your dishonesty does not constitute misinformation on my part. If you cannot be honest, or are so ignorant and unwilling to be corrected,o then there is no point in discussion.
I don't dispute that there are socialist liars whovcall themselves anarchists, just as there are liars who call themselves libertarian, like yourself. Linking to such liars proves nothing, but that you would be so presumptuous as to lecture me and back it up with a link shows that you are incapable of critical thought or debate, and thus a waste of time.
But that's not socialism. Socialism has a definition - it was coined and defined by Marx as an intermediate stage on the way to Communism after the proles have seized the means of production by violence. Marx postulated that after heavy social control and violence against the exploiters, all class and social barriers would melt away into paradise.
Turns out, he's wrong. People are different.
You're not a socialist as Marx defined it. If you want to redefine socialism and say you're this redefined thing, okay, sure. But it sounds to me like you're more into free action than socialism. That's a healthy place to be. Marxist-brand socialism is not a healthy place to be, or at least, everything that's remotely tried to be it has gone very wrong.