It's a long piece, so one might wonder why I found it interesting; I've excerpted some of the interesting parts at https://plus.google.com/103530621949492999968/posts/Ez6Xh8Ha... - I particularly found interesting the discussion of how egalitarian tribes regard politicians & power.
He makes the assertion that slavery (pg 71, section 3), where somebody rents you out to another, and wage labor, where you rent yourself out are an equivalent arrangement. This is an emotional appeal, rather than a logical one, and this type of 'reasoning' seems to be at the root of more assertions in the paper. You take the job that is available under the circumstances, primarily to put food in your mouth and a roof over your head, and secondarily, you work and hope for better to reach your goals and dreams.
You take the master that is willing to take you, primarily to put food in your mouth and roof over your head.
edit: for the down voter(s). Take the time to argue how this is different (feel free to downvote me still) I don't really care about internet points but would rather engage in conversation about this topic.
"Those sent to work in town often had some input in their choice of master and some, like Frederick Douglass, were allowed to live on their own upon surrender of satisfactory wages." [1]
That was probably far from the norm in the 1830's. Frederick Douglass was no less in bondage though.
Later in life, Mr. Douglass said:
"[E]xperience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other". [2]
"Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement[.]" [3]
A slave owner makes you worse off than if they didn't exist, by chaining you, beating you, and threatening to kill you if you try to run away.
An employer doesn't necessarily make you any worse off than if they didn't exist; if you'd be starving without food/payment from them, then their actions aren't the root cause of your starving, nature is, as if they didn't exist then you'd still be starving.
The slaveowner relies on social institutions which enforce slavery. If you escape, a man with a stick will enforce the slaveowner's property relations over you.
Capitalism also relies on the man with a stick. (To bizarre extremes: even if you're just innovative in a way which is supposedly someone's "intellectual property", or fileshare bytes representing a movie, then a man with a stick is supposed to come after you if you try to ignore their threats.) Capitalists control a society which causes people to starve and be homeless if they can't rent themselves out to one of them. Only in an Orwellian society could economics be considered separate from politics.
(In more decent societies, those who try to act like slaveowners — and capitalists for that matter — would merely be considered psychotic criminals. You couldn't be a slaveowner, because taking people as property is kidnapping. You couldn't be a capitalist, because "owning" scarce means of production is theft; witholding food/shelter to force people to obey is assault.)
Again, it's not society which "causes people to starve and be homeless". Hunting and gathering cannot support seven billion people; it is the accumulation of capital in forms such as advanced agriculture that allows the food production that currently sustains the world population. If all capitalists and corporations ceased to exist, a huge proportion of the world population would starve due to the collapse in the global structure of production.
The means of production have to be produced by someone. How is it theft for capitalists to own the means of production when they produced it? And if you say well the workers produced it, the workers only agreed to work for pay, not for a stake in it (else they'd be investors/partners, not just workers).
Here's the thing: even with just two people interacting without any society around them whatsoever, it's possible for one to agree to work for the other for payment of some sort but without claiming an ownership stake in whatever's produced (i.e. common employment contract). To make such a thing illegal, you must necessarily introduce violence into the system, to prevent these two people from carrying out a mutually agreeable exchange.
It's of course possible that two people on a "level playing field" agree to an employmeent like agreement - fair enough, one is providing the other with a service - but could do without it, as such he or she can make sure that the compensation is fair.
However this "level playing field" doesn't exist today. As such this agreement is not based on a rational choice, but a coerced one, where the one person got the capital and the other person needs the capital. As such the power is with the capital and the compensation is much less determined by the worker. Furthermore the person without the capital can only choose between different people offering compensation against labor. This person can't just do without it.
When you speak of a 'coerced' choice, it's not coerced in the normal sense (coerced by a person), it's coerced by nature. If the person doesn't get work, doesn't find some means of acquiring goods produced by other people, they'll starve; this is not the result of anybody threatening to starve them, it's simply the result of there not being enough food lying around to eat.
To state or imply that the starving person has some form of right to the food produced by others, one must make a moral judgement. It hence becomes an issue of moral philosophy as to whether the fact that a person "just can't do without" the job has any bearing on the situation.
If one assumes people owe others things by virtue of having those things (or by virtue of the others not having those things), then one can say it's coercion to refuse to give someone food one owns unless they perform work. If however one assumes that people owe others nothing apart from what they've specifically agreed to give them, then there's no coercion taking place.
The pro-market position is that assuming people owe others things they haven't promised them necessarily entails coercion. If society things Joe Rich owes something to Bob Poor, but Joe Rich doesn't want to give it, then making him give it anyway necessarily requires violence or the threat thereof against Joe Rich. Through this lens, if Bob Poor starves then this doesn't necessarily imply anyone's committed violence or coercion against him, instead it's a simple result of the combination of nature's scarcity and his inability or unwillingness to do something for others in exchange for food or the purchasing power to acquire it.
I often find it amusing when people say that swearing indicates a lacking vocabulary. I'd argue however that this is much more present when discussing economics and philosophical topics like this one, where a simple argumentation is replied to with an unnecessarily deep discourse into mathematics (usually in economics) or philosophy.
Anyway, back to your reponse. You argue that it's coerced by nature. Which I believe is false; these conditions are derived from political decisions and uphold by political institutions. Private property is probably the most glaring example of such a political decision. Additionally, it's no longer true that scarcity is the main cause that people starve.
I don't understand why it's relevant if a starving person has a right to the food produced by others; whether or not this true doesn't change the premise of the discussion, namely whether wage labor is a free choice or a coerced one (albeit indirectly) given the premise of modern society.
And regardings morals in general: Hopefully peoples ideological beliefs is based on what they think is right and wrong. Unfortunately I think this is becoming less and less so, but that's another discussion.
Simple argumentation often elicits a complex response when the issue itself is complex, as simple arguments can miss important elements of the issue.
The difference here is regarding whether private property is considered a political institution (as you're considering it) or more a natural social institution (like language). This is also the essential difference between right anarchism and left anarchism.
The right of a starving person to food produced by others is relevant to determining whether wage labour is free or 'coerced'. If they have no right to food produced by others, then modern society isn't forcing them to have any less food than they otherwise would, hence I would argue that it's not accurate to say society is 'coercing' them. In the sense that coercion is defined as threatening to make someone's life worse off if they don't do what you want them to (which is the definition I was using).
Here's a thought experiment to identify libertarian/right anarchist morality. Imagine you're walking in a park, and see Rich Uncle Bob, who has just invented a cure for eugitis, walking along carrying sacks of the cure. You also see Poorman Joe lying on the ground nearby, soon to die of eugitis. You have a weapon. Assuming it was legally allowed and you were guaranteed success, would you threaten Rich Uncle Bob with the weapon to make him give some of the cure to Poorman Joe, saving Joe's life? People with personal moral philosophies that are more pro-property would generally say no. Now change Poorman Joe to one's sick spouse/child/parent. Generally only libertarians or market anarchists would still answer no in this case. I think that scenario acts as a microcosm for the general differences in moral beliefs between pro- and anti- market types.
First of all, there's no such thing as right anarchism - if you by that means the so called, in america, libertarianism a.k.a anarco-capitalism - Anarchism is a path of Socialism. Private-property is against the most fundamental ideas of anarchism. This revisionism winds me up to no end.
And no, simple argumentations doesn't require a complex response. Often that's just a bad excuse to cloud responses in a viel of complexity which requires more energy to interpret and reply to.
A perfect example of this overcomplexification is this point regarding food produced by others and the indirect coercion of todays society of the propertyless. Either that or you're just missing the point - fair enough in that case. It's very plain to see and understand, I think, that a person today without property (or capital) is indirectly forced to rent out his or her labor, to try to overcomplexify this by ancap philosophical nonsense is just dishonest. The produced food isn't even the issue here, it's the politically decided and upheld privilege of private-property and in the end the ownership of the means of production. A proper non-forced choice would require that the person has enough land to be self-sufficent or enough capital to study or work for oneself.
I would also advise you to read and understand the distinction between private-property and posessions that anarchism makes.
Anarchism literally means (in the original Greek) 'no ruler'; anarcho-capitalism fits that definition, no?
It's impossible for people to communicate if they aren't both using the same definitions of particular words. It's not 'overcomplexification' to clearly define the terms used, it's a necessary step in having a non-nonsensical conversational interchange.
In this case, the issue is over 'forced'. When you state "a person today without property (or capital) is indirectly forced to rent out his or her labor", you're referring to them being forced by circumstance, not by anyone actively setting out to deprive them of food. Whether or not to consider this (or anything else) a bad thing is a moral judgement. Moral judgements require philosophical analysis.
I'm pointing out that, in the context of the viewpoint that only actively forcing people (i.e. do this or I'll hit you) is bad, what you describe as a 'non-forced' choice involves force against other parties, but the 'indirectly forced' choice doesn't. How? If a person is born without enough land or capital to be self-sufficient, and all the land and capital in the world at their time of birth was already used by others, then giving them enough land or capital to be self-sufficient would necessarily (assuming it wasn't given voluntarily through charity) require direct force to take the land/capital of others to give to this person.
I understand the distinction between private-property and possessions; that's what I was referring to as the biggest distinction between left anarchism (or if you'd prefer, anarchism) and right anarchism (or if you'd prefer, arch libertarianism). Which side of the fence one falls on seems to depend on one's particular philosophical views towards private property, which I attempted to illustrate with the thought experiment I described previously.
"Anarchism literally means (in the original Greek) 'no ruler'; anarcho-capitalism fits that definition, no?"
This is clearly an irrational sentiment, completely void of history, bordering dogmatism, and at the very least childish.
It seems that ancaps, that want to keep the privileges but just do away with the redistribution of wealth, is really selective in their thinking. For some reason the full focus is always on direct force and how bad that is, externalities or indirect force caused by capital or property accumulation is played down - obviously because it doesn't fit the interest of the pro-property crowd.
"If a person is born without enough land or capital to be self-sufficient, and all the land and capital in the world at their time of birth was already used by others, then giving them enough land or capital to be self-sufficient would necessarily (assuming it wasn't given voluntarily through charity) require direct force to take the land/capital of others to give to this person."
This is an unlikely hypothetical scenario and not reflected in todays society. This is another instance of a dishonest way to argue. You argue for private-property as it's like in todays society where land is not scarce - in the sense of actual active usage. And your argument for this is in a hyphotetical scenario where all land is actually occupied.
Furthermore, in a proper anarchist, going with this scenario, a society where all land is actually being cultivated or in various types of use; I'm pretty sure people would not need to work, and as such need to own their own land, as in such a society work is what people would want to abandon. Abondonment of work would of course be impossible in a ancap society where the propertyless would need to work for the propertied.
Finally, your whole argument stems from the fact that you see private-property as some form of natural law where is not a privilege. This is just Orwellian, where owning more land than one can possibly, actively, use oneself is still regarded as a righteous possession rather than just privileged private-property upheld by some form of force. Private-property can't be sustained without some form of force. Even if that's for you ancaps is some kind of payed private militia or similar, it still needs to be upheld from people that would like to actually use the land for self-sufficiency. And no, to use the land by paying workers to use it for you is not using the land by oneself.
How is it irrational to suggest that it's okay to use a word based on the meaning implied by its etymology rather than the meaning with which it was traditionally used? Language isn't static; words change and grow in meaning over time. Look at 'capitalist' for instance; the sense in which it's used by capitalists now differs from its exact meaning when originally coined by Marx.
The focus of ancaps is on direct force because ancaps consider that kind of coercion bad. They don't consider indirect force similarly bad, as I've described previously. This is a philosophical difference between ancaps and traditional anarchists.
You speak of 'privileges'; ancaps are pro privilege. Privilege to people who save more and/or people who invest productively. Why? Because saving and investment is vital for economic growth. If there is no benefit to saving/investing, no 'privilege', then people will have no incentive to save or invest, and development will be slower. This is one reason ancaps support private property rather than just possessions, as private people is required for people to be able to accumulate property, to be able to save.
You're speaking of land being occupied in the sense of actual active usage, I was speaking of it being occupied in the sense of being owned by someone. This is what I mean about communication being difficult when the meanings of terms used aren't agreed upon beforehand; two people can make statements that are both valid but mean different things, talking past each other. You're correct in saying there's lots of unoccupied land in the anarchist sense of occupation, but I'm correct in saying there's no unoccupied land in the sense that all land is legally considered someone's private property.
How would people not need to work if all land was being cultivated or in use? It would depend on the use; if for instance all the land was being used for subsistence farming, people would definitely still need to work, as land doesn't farm itself.
>Finally, your whole argument stems from the fact that you see private-property as some form of natural law
You've hit the nail on the head there; ancaps literally do consider property a 'natural right', and have made various arguments for this. This is a fundamental difference between libertarian and non-libertarian types.
Land ownership may be considered a form of investment. Much as someone can own lots of gold they can't physically use themselves, someone is allowed to own lots of land in a libertarian framework.
Ancaps would argue that aggression isn't required in maintaining private property, as they're treating private property as a natural right, and thus any attempt to deprive a person of their property consists of a violation of that right, and therefore someone defending their property is considered to be acting in self-defense, not aggressively.
Essentially, if property is considered a natural right than the person trying to take the property is the aggressor, whereas if it's not considered a natural right (or moral equivalent, whatever the terminology) then the person defending the property is the aggressor.
The issue thus ultimately comes down to the one's view on private property. Which, as I've stated, I consider a matter of personal moral philosophy, as I don't believe in absolute objective answers to moral questions.
>If all capitalists and corporations ceased to exist, a huge proportion of the world population would starve due to the collapse in the global structure of production.
This is a straw man. Organized production would not cease to exist if there were no exploitative capitalists. Cooperative businesses exist today, and prove there is an alternative model.
>To make such a thing illegal
Anarchism does not propose to "make things illegal." That belies a fundamental misunderstanding of anarchism and what it stands for.
>mutually agreeable exchange
A mutually agreeable exchange does not leave one person with a fraction of the value of their labor, and another with unearned profit. Such an exchange can only happen under the oppression of a capitalist system, where laborers are forced to sell themselves to capitalists.
>Cooperative businesses exist today, and prove there is an alternative model.
Does the dominance of non-cooperative businesses today suggest that cooperative business are less efficient? I mean, there aren't laws preventing the creation and operation of cooperative businesses, so if they're not less efficient then why aren't there any in the Fortune 500? If they are less efficient, this would mean that in a free society businesses formed in the traditional way would come to dominate.
If anarchism doesn't propose to "make things illegal", then how would it prevent people who wished to from selling their labour to employers in the traditional business model?
>A mutually agreeable exchange does not leave one person with a fraction of the value of their labor, and another with unearned profit.
That depends on how value is determined. The judgement you're making relies on the labour theory of value, that value is determined by the amount of labour a person put into something. Morality is however an inherently subjective thing: there's no objective way to say that the labour theory of value is superior to any other theory of value.
If value is subjective, then the value of an action depends on how other people value it. In which case the value of a person's work can be inferred from what other people are willing to give them for it; the more they are willing to give/pay the person, the more valuable that person's work must be to them.
If the worker was able to produce a given amount of value without the aid of capitalists, there's nothing to stop him doing so. The fact that he chooses to work for capitalists hence implies that access to the capitalist's capital allows him to produce more value than he could otherwise produce.
How is the capitalist's profit from this unearned? If they had not accumulated the capital in the first place, had not saved instead of consuming, had not invested their money and taken the risks that that entails, then the worker wouldn't have access to the capital that allows him to produce more and would necessarily be producing less (as if he could produce the same amount without access to the capitalist's capital, he wouldn't be working for the capitalist in the first place).
In anarchism, you take the egalitarian society that is willing to take you, primarily to put food in your mouth and roof over your head.
All of this argumentation is primarily emotional. It makes a lot more sense to talk about what you actually want (utility?) and what social changes would be an improvement, than to try to argue that some social institution is intrinsically bad.
I recall Chomsky saying something along the lines that this position was a common position of most proletariat in the late 19th century. I am sure he has sources to back this up, but I don't know those. So I would be wary to designate that as an "illogical" and not a cultural thing.
It used to be a common position of American proto-libertarians as well, in the "individualist" tradition, like Lysander Spooner. There's an old American 18th/19th-century ideal of having your own tools/land/freedom and not having your labor subordinated to a boss/master/government/lord/duke/company/whatever.
Even Abraham Lincoln had a very tepid defense of wage work. He argued that working for a wage wasn't slavery or serfdom, in response to southern claims that northern workers weren't free men either. But his argument boiled down to: yes, wage-workers aren't truly free men for now, but since they are paid and not legally compelled to stay, they can save up money and eventually become their own masters, therefore their subordination to a boss should be regarded as merely a temporary condition that they will be able to escape from.
A common pro-capitalist talking point is that merely saying "wage slavery" is somehow "emotional". And then this evidence-free rhetoric is supposed to somehow undermine your point.
This is basically desperation; of course renting yourself to obey the commands of an order-giver is wage slavery. Capitalist ideology relies on Orwellian propaganda that it's "freedom" to watch your tongue all day, lest you get fired and appeal to some other wage-slaver that you're a useful tool to rent.
Also, it helps demonstrate that capitalist economics is mainly scientism. This soft social science hitches a ride on the popular imagery of the solemn-faced scientist.
From Graeber: "Instead of people selling us or renting us out we rent out ourselves."
Graeber is suggesting that renting someone's labour-capacity is fundamentally the same whether the person is renting out their own labour capacity, or the capacity of someone else. Claiming that two things have the same structure is a logical argument; it may be wrong in this case, but it's not "an emotional appeal."
If you are claiming it is logical because it is an argument from analogy, even if it is a false analogy, then technically I would have to agree to that. My comment about it being emotional is that when an argument from analogy is made between two things that have an obvious, fundamental difference between them, choice vs. force, then I see the person appealing to your emotions under false analogy by using the common term 'rent' for both situations. This is where ad hominem stems from, and although a term in logic, arguments based on it are not logical and usually are filled with emotion.
It's not choice vs. force though, it's indirect force vs direct force. To make an actual choice in this case would require that the person about to rent out his or her labor has some alternative to wage labor; such as enough land to be self-sufficient, or perhaps enough capital to work for oneself.
Between first grade and tenure, collectivism is all but snuffed out of students. Toddlers are allowed to play together, and full faculty often form granting teams that can be legitimate collectives. But mostly everyone is the captain of their own reputation, and will be held personally responsible for their work, which they are considered to own.
There is no agreement about the terms of anarchism among anarchists, but collectivism is a common cultural practice and property is pretty antithetical to most anarchist ecologies.
Some (high value) academics see the academy as libertarian, but that's how things look when you're being catered to.
The idea of individual authorship is pretty unassailable in most employment/admissions decisions so that doesn't leave much space for people living as anarchists. You can have some success at it if your privilege napsack is stocked
About the first section where it talks about lack of anarchism in academia. My friend is actually working on her master thesis (on history) about anarchism (here, in Mexico). She's always telling me about how she struggles with her teachers and how some of them just want tell her off with no arguments like just telling her that anarchists are violent.
