Libertarian Socialist Society Thread!

well, to be fair, a lot of Left Marxists follow to the idea that Communism is a classless stateless society, so any ad-vocation of central planning from them would be a short term thing if at all.

I think the main thing you are getting at here is Leninism or Marxism-Leninism as it is known (though given the debate over Marxist theory I take issue with the use of that term), anyway, certainly it is fair to criticize Leninism, indeed Libertarian Socialists and Anarchists almost universally reject Lenin and Leninism for similar reasons that 99% of the Left reject Stalin.

this video may be of interest to you, Chomsky basically explains what Lenin was about and why the Libertarian Left are opposed to Leninism:

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQsceZ9skQI* link in case video won't embed for you

btw if you show this video to certain people on the Left they will have hissy fits I imagine

Money existed before the state. The notion of money did not come from the state. It came from the market. It came from free individuals trading goods and services who wanted a good that could be used for indirect trade. The state just stole the issuing power from the market.

And you have still not answered my question. What if there was emergence of money. What will a Libertarian Socialist society do?

Well firstly most capitalism is a bottom up system.

This notion that because there are some big firms in capitalism that capitalism is a top down system is not true. Big firms are only big because they serve a big market. And a a big market is the common man (notice how firms that only serve the rich a never big firms it firms like Microsoft and Ford that are big and serve the common man) . If it turns out that big firms are more efficient than smaller firms then what is the problem?

And this argument forgets that the vast majority of economic activity is done by small firms. Big firms, depending on how you define big, are the exception to the rule. That is why the you always hear people talking about how small firms can create jobs and ''kick'' start the economy. It is only because we all recognise big firms that people think capitalism is about big firms, it is just a perception bias.

Show me a definition of capitalism where it says that "the many must be subjugated to the few".

Don't be ridiculous. Capitalism is decentralised by its very nature. And planned? Really? Do businesses point guns at consumers and tell them what they want? In a planned economy there are no businesses, there is only the all-powerful state which dictates what should be produced, how much of it, and where it should be allocated; it throws natural supply and demand completely out of the window - the very opposite of capitalism.

Im sick of hearing 'socialism isn't centrally plannet' yadda yadda, No, not all socialisms are centrally planned, but orthodox marxism and communism

I think it is fair to say that every form of socialism that has been tried has been the authoritarian kind

Capitalism is characterised by wage-labour, the separation of labour from ownership (basically what is meant by 'private property in the means of production'). That there has to be more employees than employers is simple mathematics.

As I said above, maybe at an individual business level (and only under some form of 'purist' capitalism would this even take place), but internally capitalist businesses operate on top-down planning.

That's simply not true, but even if it was, employment is not subjugation. Subjugation implies a coercive relationship, and if it's not coercive then it's not a problem because what you're really referring to is an employer's right to dictate terms of employment, terms which are accepted voluntarily by employees.

However, I am a prime example of why it is not true that there have to be more employees than employers. I run my own business, and a lot of our work comes from other businesses who outsource their work to us because it's cheaper and more flexible than them having to employ people. If it became widespread that employment was less cost-effective than outsourcing, then the market would shift in that direction. Self-employment would become the norm rather than the exception. Capitalism is in no way characterised by wage-labour, it is characterised by whatever arises in a free-market.


How a business operates internally has nothing to do with whether an economy is centrally planned. Families usually operate using "top-down planning" too, but that obviously has nothing to do with the economy as a whole. How businesses choose to organise themeselves is their concern, and no-one elses.

That's simply not true, but even if it was, employment is not subjugation. Subjugation implies a coercive relationship, and if it's not coercive then it's not a problem because what you're really referring to is an employer's right to dictate terms of employment, terms which are accepted voluntarily by employees.

Capitalism is in no way characterised by wage-labour, it is characterised by whatever arises in a free-market.

How a business operates internally has nothing to do with whether an economy is centrally planned.

How businesses choose to organise themeselves is their concern, and no-one elses.

Err..
Anarchist Catalonia in the Spanish Civil War?
Revolutionary Russia before the Bolshevik coup in October 1917 (i.e. February-October)?
Zapatistas?
Makhnovist Ukraine?
Paris Commune?
The National Workshops in the 1848 French Revolution?
American Old West?
Native American tribes?
Virtually every other tribal or pre-state society?

I could go on. Pretty much every stateless society has been socialist of a sort and uprisings against states inevitably involve the socialist principles of popular self-organisation and self-management, along with participatory democracy (e.g. Hungary 1956, France 1968, Italy in the Biennio Rosso, the Mexican Revolution, Romania 1989, Egypt 2011, Germany 1918-19, etc).

It may appear voluntary in the moment, if you take it out of its context, but workers are only in that situation because they have been systematically deprived of their own means of production during the creation of capitalism and since then. The situation that forces them to sell themselves as wage-labourers is what's been forced on them.

And Libsocs (well, all socialists tbh) oppose the separation of labour from ownership.

Many mutualists will be happy to tell you that markets, and especially 'free markets' are not the same as capitalism. Capitalism is the only system where wage labour is widespread (depending on your point of view, you could say it's the only system where wage labour exists at all). However a market economy is not unique to capitalism.

I didn't say it did, I said capitalist businesses internally operate on the basis of top-down central planning.

You're treating a business as a unit, as something that has one central thought, rather than being made up of individuals. Suppose you substitute the word 'businesses' for 'states'? Somehow I think you won't agree with that then.

Great well done, you took an extract of my post and missed out what I said after it.

For a start, the American Old west was a bastion of free market capitalism

Speaking of failure, as it the list. Yeah, well, it all goes hand in hand with massive death.

And thanks, that really hammers it home, "ever tribal and pre-state society", great, cos' that's just what we want to go back to. Are you and anarcho-primitivist, those freaks are the worst of all.

The trouble with social anarchists in the 21st century, in the west, is that they are like "hurr durr screw the state herpy derpy screw the free market durka derrr!" and they depend so much on the system, they have benefited so much from it. My music tech at college basically defines himself as a libertarian socialist and said that he only thinks like that idealistically but in the real world would not want to live like that, would not want to enforce
anyone to live like that,

Your are essentially just the same as authoritarian leftists, you want to enforce your system on everyone else yet 99% of the population would never want to live in that system, you will turn our achievements so far back, ever time I think of anarchists I think of squaler, poverty, death.

You would rather everyone were poor so long as there were no rich or middle classes.

I'm just going to rant for a few lines, make a few assertions that aren't backed up by anything, talk about 'your system' without actually knowing what that is, assume I speak for 99% of the population, and then some other rubbish.

As I've said before, though I am not one, Anarcho-capitalism is the closest thing to capitalism that can be achieved.

Ah, the classic 'money from barter' myth. The problem with this theory? There isn't a shred of evidence to support it. In fact all the evidence suggests it didn't take place. The only place in history where barter economies exist is in societies that were already used to using money where suddenly the money became unavailable or unreliable (like 1990s Russia).

Nothing in particular, probably. People wouldn't be stopped from using money, whether it's credit or cash.

From a perspective of a business as a unit, yes, a form of 'purist' capitalism would be bottom-up, but businesses are not the bottom. Internally, capitalist businesses operate on a top-down basis.

Capitalism is characterised by wage-labour, the separation of labour from ownership (basically what is meant by 'private property in the means of production'). That there has to be more employees than employers is simple mathematics.

As I said above, maybe at an individual business level (and only under some form of 'purist' capitalism would this even take place), but internally capitalist businesses operate on top-down planning.

You can't be deprived of something you never had to begin with. It's not capitalism you're arguing against, it's reality; the mere fact that resources are finite and that individual experiences are mutually exclusive.

What do you mean by 'the separation of labour from ownership'?

A free-market economy isn't 'unique to' capitalism, a free-market economy is capitalism.

Yes you did:

"In fact an argument could be made that central planning is closer to capitalism, as central planning takes place within capitalist firms."

How am I treating businesses as having a one central thought, and how does that even relate to my point?

The internal structure of businesses has no bearing on whether an economy is centrally planned or not.

I was only replying to one of your points. Some I agreed with and some I didn't have an opinion either way, but I was only responding to one.



Not at all, in fact it was the rise of capitalism that killed the Old West. The Old West didn't really have a market economy, never mind 'free market capitalism' (which has never existed anywhere), labour was not separated from ownership - farmers/producers owned their own means of production and so received the full product of their labour. No wage labour.



So you're saying that when a stateless society or anti-state rebellion is violently and brutally crushed by the state, the violence is actually the fault of the stateless society or rebels? Yeah, great logic there.



Great strawman there.

Are you surprised that most stateless societies came before state societies rather than between?

They weren't even all that primitive. Mesopotamia, for example, developed what were very sophisticated societies for their time, without states.



Wait a go, using personal prejudices and anecdotes, as arguments.......
I'm prepared to bet that you 'depend on the system' just as much as any libsoc does.
Have you ever used the NHS?
Did you ever have state education?
Do you use state-built roads?
Do you use the internet that was developed by US military technicians? Or in the same vein as that, chances are the computer you're using partially was too.
You get the idea.







It can't be achieved. It would fall apart in about a hundred different ways. Nor do I see any reason why we would want to be achieved.

As for the Paul video, classic fallacy I've heard a thousand times. Capitalism needs to be enforced on people because people aren't naturally going to agree to rent their bodies out and give up part of what they produce for nothing unless something is forcing them.

The reason why there is no particular evidence of the emergence of money is because money was used before anything was even documented. Money was invented long before the printing press.

So what if this capitalist system started to outperform the libertarian socialist system? What if everything that was really valuable was produced more efficiently by the capitalists? Are you going to let your society be outcompeted by the raw productive captacity of the price mechanism.

Not entirely true. I have a job and I am probably right at the bottom of my company but I still make contributions and change the business model in some way. Sure the directors decide marketing strategies and decide when products are launched, but they do not nanny every single department. To do that would destroy the company.

Infact when I think about it I have quite a lot of autonomy. As long as I get the job done nobody higher up really cares.

Who employs the employers? I can tell you. It is the consumer. It is the common man. It is silly to look at a frim and assume the the employers are the commanders of the economy. In reality it is the consumers. Without consumers buying what the capitalists have to offer then there would be no firm.

In many cases that is not true. One of the limiting factors on the size of companies is the problem of top down planning. It only works to a very small extent. Once a firm gets so large it starts to go into diseconomies of scale. The firm becomes so large that the resources start to get malcoordinated. This holds the size of firms down so that they do not over do top down planning because doing so would make the business less profitable. Indefinitely increasing the size of a firm will eventually make the firm unprofitable. A capitalist system automatically keeps the amount of neccessary top down planning in firms to an equilibrium level.

The government destroyed this society

If you are a mutualist, with whom I get along with very well, then I hope you understand capitalism and the free market are seperate, and its the state that has corrupted capitalism?

Really? Evidence of the first transactions and economies predate any evidence that physical cash was ever used in them by thousands of years.

The video you posted is another classic reiteration of the same fallacy. It gets it wrong in the first 30 seconds when it says 'people started to swap these items'. There is no evidence that 'barter economies' ever occurred, apart from in places where money had already been invented, but where the money was suddenly removed (like 1990s Russia), they're if anything a recent phenomenon.

Under the 'barter' theory, all non-money economies ought to be barter economies. There are plenty of documented societies without money. The number found using barter is 0. They're either gift economies or work on some sort of credit/debt economy.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/david-graeber-on-the-invention-of-money-%E2%80%93-notes-on-sex-adventure-monomaniacal-sociopathy-and-the-true-function-of-economics.html

Wait, so you've gone from money existing to capitalism existing? How do you work that out?

Doesn't change the top-down principle. Power and authority, can be devolved, yes, but it still ultimately resides at the top. In the same way that states can be very centralised, or quite decentralised. They can be very intrusive, or not that intrusive. They're still top down though.

You've fallen onto repeating a mantra that you've heard rather than addressing the argument now. You indicate it yourself in the last sentence of this paragraph. We're not discussing cases where there isn't a firm by definition. We're only interested in firms that do exist. I never said employers were masters of the economy, but they are masters of the business they own.

Which is why mutualists argue that capitalism would disappear if it were ever subjected to a free market. But from my point of view, a free market only exists in the imagination so it's a fruitless debate anyway.

So you are saying trade, barter, did not exist. Get real. It is just ridiculous to suppose that people did not trade before even money came into conception.

All of your ideas assume an insulated society of where people know everyone.

The gift debt system completely falls apart once you start to trade with people whom you do not know or will never meet again.

Now there is no sort of 'social' contract enforced implicitly by the community. Now the only reasonable system is a money system, something like gold (that has been used) or salt (like the Romans used). It is pretty luagable to think the Roman empire could have worked without some form of money.

This leads nicely onto a topic Hayek explained very well

All you need to finish the job is to institute some kind of notion of officially defined private property and you are done.

Sorry could you define what you mean by top down and bottom up.

No they are not. Ultimately they are servants to the consumer. If the business man cannot serve the consumer he will not make enough money to overcome his operating costs and will in time go bankrupt.

Mutualists as far as I am concerned are really capitalists in disguise. They just do not want to think of themselves as capitalists or portray themselves as capitalists.

Free association for mutual gain sounds an awful lot like capitalism.

So, do you have any actual evidence to support this claim, or are you just going to assume you're right? As I've said, plenty of societies have been found not using money through history. Not one of these has been found to use barter, when according to the theory you propound they should all be barter economies. When the Cambridge anthropology department researched this, their conclusion was that there was no evidence of any economy based primarily on barter, and that all their available evidence suggested there had never been such a thing.

So, yes, I am saying barter did not exist. Do you have anything demonstrating that it did, or do you intend to just post more videos with no evidence?

Consider the situation if you are a travelling trader. Travelling, especially with goods, is risky. You're not going to go somewhere on the off chance that they might have what you want and might want what you have. You're going to go somewhere with people you know will want wool and will trade you iron for it. There's no need for money, this is quite an easy trade to have fixed equivalents with. Money would actually be a handicap because it makes you more of a target for thieves. What are nomadic robber bands going to want wool or iron for? But stealing money that they can trade for anything would be a much more attractive proposition to them.

Which is how pretty much all early societies (the same society you're claiming your theory of the origins of money occurred) were.

Which, until recently, very few people actually did. Those few who were involved in international trade would find using physical money for these trades a handicap.

Whether things would be different in a society like today's is a different question, but as the state makes sure we do have money, we can't know. But we're currently increasingly moving back to credit money, so I think there's a good chance it will be fine.

It's interesting you mention Rome, because this is where physical money first seems to originate; when city-states start to become empires. This resolves another problem with the barter money theory. Virtually everywhere the gold and silver mines were owned by the kings or religious authorities (sometimes the same thing). How had they been ruling for centuries, and never had the idea to make coins, which would make taking from their population so much easier (as they'd be able to tax)? If everyone had been using gold, they should have been able to.

In actuality, it's all about war. A city state generally can rely on people to volunteer as soldiers and people to provide weapons, armour, etc for the troops because it's their own homes that are under threat, the motivation to help the war effort is already there. But when city-states become empires, you now need a way of motivating people to join the army, of having a professional army that you can supply on a constant basis (rather than just when you're attacked). This was done by paying them in gold coins, and then insisting that the population pay a tax only payable in those gold. Plus now the soldiers can spend their plunder from campaigns. Eventually this expanded into other public officials like judges, magistrates, secretaries, etc. After Rome collapsed, Europe largely reverted to credit economies (and we know this because they were keeping accounts in coins that were almost totally out of circulation and they would probably never have actually seen, let alone had).

In which he says 'socialism assumes that all available knowledge can be used by one central authority'

Socialism assumes no such thing. It's a strawman argument.

Which is quite a significant step. Unless you plan to do it the way it's always been done, which is use the state to force in on people. Which kind of violates the 'free trade' part

Not really, I would think it was self-explanatory. But I'll give it a go.

If it is top-down, ultimate authority is held by whoever is at the top of the pyramid, at the centre. Any decentralisation of that authority only occurs because this central authority has chosen to delegate some authority, and they can withdraw that delegation of power if they wish.

If it's bottom up, ultimate authority is held by the constituent parts, or members, of the institution in question. Any centralisation that occurs only does so because the members choose to delegate that power, and can withdraw that delegation if they wish.

I'd say it's socialism, but this is just playing with words.

It does not matter what an anthropology department researched. They cannot have covered all of human history. All they could have done is look at some particular cases. Which is not scientific. The research is not proper science.

Infact studying questions of this nature are inherently unempirical. The answers can be derived out through logic. And one can derive out a media of exchange through the basic pressumption that men act with purpose. Which is what Human Action is all about.

I did it yesterday. Traded some chips for a bit of steak.

This is very good point. This is why checks were developed as a form of money. Rather than lugging around gold people could just write on checks how much was owed and a bank would do the rest. From this developed the notion of credit as we know it today. A promise to pay on a piece of paper is the basis for our entire monetary system.

It is a very interesting story as to how this system developed but makes a good deal of sense.

Brilliant. Lets go back to hunter gather societies where we spend all our time trying to get enough food to live till next week. Which is what a Libertarian socialist society would turn into.

Precisely. Once an economy starts to use resources from people it does not know money has to be used to coordinate resources. When you are protecting your own family, friends and under the command of somebody you know payment is not neccessary. It is once you start working for people whom you do not know that money becomes necessary. Which is essentially Friedman's and Hayek's argument.

When he refers to socialism what he means is the planned economy. An econoy that does not use prices to guide resources. That is what it used to mean. People with any sense now recognise the ridiculousnous of that notion and thus in modern times socialist means something else most of the time.

Although the Libertarian socialist economy is still destroyed by this argument. Underlying the Liberatarians socialist is the centrally planned economy but planned democratically or by the people. Rather than by some elites or a dictator.

Government institute private property because it already existed. If I go out and kill a buffallo and then cook it people instinctively know that the product is mine. The role of the law is to protect what people already know is right through the use of force as defence against thieves.

For example. Suppose you had a system where everybody voted on what to produce. All those votes would be summed up and the things with the greatest majority would be produced. I would consider this system to be centrally planned. Because, although there are many constituents, the result is determined at the centre taking authority from all the voters. You on the other hand thing it is bottom up because everybody got a say.

A centrally planned economy is still centrally planned even if it is done democratically.

They researched a hell of a lot of human history though. And as I've said, all available evidence suggested that there was never any 'land of barter' and there is certainly no evidence to suggest they ever did.

Your second paragraph basically amounts to you saying you want to fly in the face of all fact and evidence because 'logic' says otherwise. There's nothing logical about coming to a wrong conclusion.

Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!

The problem with the 'barter theory' is that it assumes people would have gone 'I'll give you 20 eggs for that chicken' to people who were their neighbours and friends who they saw often. This would just be pointless and inefficient, and money doesn't make it that much less so - if I know I owe someone and he knows I owe him, why does he need to keep a piece of gold to demonstrate that?

1. And unless I'm very much mistaken, money has already been invented in the society you live in. No process you are involved in can invent money, it already exists.

2. So is this your regular mode of economic transaction? If it isn't, it's not the basis of anything except itself.

True, but often the reason people used credit was because they didn't have cash. For example, during Charlemagne's rule, he came up with the system of pounds, shillings and pennies. But he mvery did exist, there were very few and they were almost never actually transfeinted very few shillings and pennies, and never minted a pound at all. But people still kept accounts in terms of pounds, despite there not actually being any. It's a similar story in Ireland, before the English invaded, where the unit of account was the cumal, which is literally a slave-girl. This was still the unit of account long after slavery had been abolished in Ireland. Even when slarred.

Way to strawman and take out of context. Point out exactly where I said that I wanted to go back to early societies.

And money considerably predates these kind of economies.

Not true. Socialism is worker control of the means of production, that's what it's always been. The first socialist philosophers of the industrial era were all mostly interested in co-operatives. Until the late 19th/early 20th century schools of socialism never veered too far from this principle (Bakunin, for example, basically had the idea that co-ops would join together to form 'collectives' but fundamentally they work on the same principles). The idea that you could have 'state socialism' wasn't really popularised (if that's the right word, which I'm not sure it is) until Lenin came onto the scene, and there were pretty much always libertarian socialists criticising it.

Your evidence is useless.

Precisely. A society where everybody knows each other. Compared to an economy where we trade with people we do not know. My clothes were made by people I never met yet I traded with them using money.

I could create my own money. It might not be very good though. Money is at its heart an idea not an intrinsic thing. It is a human construct.

I bet it has happened to you.

Are you describing fractional reserve banking?

Well obviously you do not want to go back to such a state but I am pretty convinced that if we did as you libertarian socialists propose we would go back to such a state. Which would hopefully quickly corrected with a bit of good ole' capitalism, assuming you do not institute a coercive government which your society probably would.

Where does money come from?

I think the notion of state socialism came about when people actually tried to implement the ideas of Marx and other socialist thinkers. State control is the only way to in practice enforce socialist ideas on a large scale.

State control is the only way to in practice enforce socialist ideas on a large scale.