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For what it's worth, I think this is a great argument for anarchism. I differ with you on some of what you say about Marx, however. Marx and Engels never really spelled out their ideal society; the vast majority of their work was devoted to understanding how capitalism works, and what it will inevitably do in accordance with its own goals.

Socialism, or taking over the state, was always just a transitional, interim stage to true communism. Marx's clearly stated goal was democracy in the workplace, and the majority with the power to make social and economic decisions.

Unfortunately, once individual human beings get power for themselves, they tend to show an extraordinary reluctance to give someone else a crack at it. The history of the Russian Revolution teaches this lesson in spades.

I must also add that I think anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron. Capitalism requires economic, and ultimately political, decision-making to be concentrated in just a few hands. After its early stages anyway, it REQUIRIES centralization of power, and is antithetical to anything resembling true democracy.

Or anarchy. BTW, is there a difference between democracy, ie one person one vote, and anarchy?

I freely confess to being ignorant of anarchistic philosophical thought. Any recommendations for someone well-versed in historical materialism?

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IF EQUALITY IS A VIRTUE, IS UNIQUENESS A VICE?

I have an idea for a short story that I may or may not write at some point.

In it, scientists come up with a penis enlargement surgery that actually works. Predictably, all the guys who always wished they had bigger dicks go nuts, and the race is in. People's dicks just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Eventually this causes all kinds of problems (use your imagination), and a movement emerges of people who insist that the only logical thing to pass laws that everyone's dick must be the exact same size. This results in a situation where some guys have to get mandatory penis reduction surgery and others have to get mandatory penis enlargement surgery.

Once this is accomplished, the reformers decide to keep going. They decide that it's oppressive that some people are short and some are tall. So they start making people the same height, which results in a significant percentage of people becoming disabled due to spinal injuries. So now a lot of people that wanted to be taller can't even walk, along with a lot of people who were perfectly happy with their height but were forced to undergo unnecessary surgery in the name of equality.

Then it is realized that the fact that some people are more attractive than others is horribly unfair to ugly people. Because no amount of plastic surgery will make really ugly people beautiful, it is deemed necessary to give those who unfairly won the genetic lottery to have "attractiveness reduction surgery".

In order to pay for all the surgeries, a shrinking class of workers has to work harder and harder and harder until they're working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. The biggest employer at this point is the medical-industrial complex, because all these unnecessary surgeries cause all kinds of fucked-up side effects. So that point most workers are toiling away so that everyone can get sicker.

Or something like that. I haven't thought of an ending. Any ideas?

Really, though, the Marxist attempt to make everyone equal is every bit as stupid as the society I just described. If it was true that people are inherently equal, there would be no reason to hold it up as a value. No one makes a big deal about the fact that we all breathe oxygen. Not only is it not true that all people are equal, the reverse is true! All people are, at least in some ways, unique. I think a ton of confusion have been caused by the concept of Equality, and I think we would be well to unpack it a bit more.

If there are some people with extraordinary gifts, they should be encouraged to be all that they can be, so long as they don't exploit or oppress others. We should celebrate people who have exceptional gifts, including those who choose to use their gifts to generate wealth.

Marxism sets up a false premise that entrepreneurial activity is inherently exploitative, and that just isn't so. Unfortunately, this creates a view that there is something immoral about having wealth.

IMHO, there are two main ways to generate wealth. One is to make it, and the other and to take it.

The honest to create wealth is to generate it. If you think of something that people want, then make it, then sell it to them, have you done anything wrong? Anarchism basically turns on the idea that all human relations should be voluntary and consensual. If you haven't coerced someone or used fraud to trick them into something they didn't mean to agree to, you're good, and you shouldn't feel guilty about this wealth. If you want to share it with others, great. But no one should be allowed to force you to give them a cut if you don't want to. Taxation is theft.

Capitalism, i.e. usury, is designed to enrich those who own capital which they can invest to order to generate a return.

Really, the worst political problem the world currently faces is that of an utterly depraved Parasite Class who produce nothing of value, yet extract the wealth produced by the real economy and divert it towards the rich. Think Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, Vanguard, etc... Can you imagine how much more wealth there would be to go around if it wasn't for the hoarding of the Parasite Class?

The Bolsheviks exterminated the Mennonites because they were landowners, because they had farms worth stealing.

Once you understand that bankers and industrialists bankrolled the Bolsheviks, you can see Marxism amounts to a Reverse Robin Hood thing - steal from the poor and give to the rich, while pretending to do the opposite. It's really quite amazing that they managed to pull it off.

Okay, this comment is plenty long enough, because I really like that you're asking the right questions!

Really that I see Marxism as ultimately a kind of knockoff anarchism designed to thwart genuine revolutionaries, I like that you're willing to hear what I have to say.

I really think that the Marxist idea of equality needs to be mocked into the ground, because it's simply anti-human.

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You raise some good points. I am aware of Marx's professed views about supposedly transitional nature of the dictatorship. I just don't believe that he was ever genuinely on the side of a free humanity. I think he was commissioned by rich people in order to lead the socialist movement into a dead end.

On another note, the traditional position of anarchists is against democracy. Unfortunately, this is poorly understood today because since the 90s or something, anarchists have had the confusing position of being both for and against democracy. Anarchists are all for participatory, horizontal "direct democracy" but against electoral, representative democracy.

To understand the position of classical anarchists in regards to democracy, I would enthusiastically refer to this essay by Zoe Baker:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/zoe-baker-anarchism-and-democracy

(I'll include a quote from this essay at the end of this comment about Historical Anarchist Methods of Decision-Making.)

An important point is that anarchists are not against voting, per se, but the idea of majority rule. If 51% of people voted to make the other 49% their slaves, would that be legitimate? Of course not. There is nothing necessarily moral about majority rule. But voting can be useful sometimes. In the real world, it's not possible for everyone to get what they wanted. Even if it were, it wouldn't be a good idea for everyone to get their way, because some people are evil, insane, delusional, or too stupid to know what's good for them. Voting is mainly useful as a way of making it clear to minority factions that their proposals are not supported by the majority. This does not imply that the minority then has to obey the majority. They could also choose to organize amongst themselves, but in many cases, hold-ups in consensus processes are simply due to people overly fond of the sound of their own voices. In such cases, a simple of hands is often the best way of saying "Okay, we hear you, but we're not going to do that. Can we move on now?"

Anarchists also reject the practice of legitimizing the authority of the state by participating in elections about which management team should manage the state, and anarchists aim to govern themselves with consensus.

Unfortunately, the degeneration of anarchist theory has led to a total misunderstanding about what consensus is. Consensus is not unanimous agreement! Seeking unanimous agreement on everything might work in a cult for a few years, but in general it's stupid to try to get people to agree on everything. The point of consensus processes is to arrive at decisions that no one violently objects to.

Consensus process, which can be absolutely awful when conducted by people who don't know what they're doing, is a necessary part of anarchist praxis.

Why? Well, because anarchists don't have enforcement mechanisms in place to impose the will of the majority onto individuals by force. Anarchists believe that the problems caused by the creation of institutions with coercive power will invariably lead to worse problems than a simple difference of opinion.

Both anarchism and Marxism use the word "Equality" to describe their goals, but the concepts differ so greatly that I personally encourage anarchists to ditch the word altogether. Egalitarianism is a better word for what anarchists want anyway.

Marxists seem to think it is inherently injust that people have different quantities of stuff, but is it? I don't think so. Oppression is when someone imposes their will upon another, not when people have different quantities of stuff.

The anarchist idea of equality, which I prefer to call egalitarianism, is the idea that each person should have equal say over the decisions that affect them.

In practice, though, the degree of decision-making people that a person would have with their status within that society. Are they a contributing members of that society, who pulls their weight and treats people with respect? Well, if they are, they're probably going to have more say that someone who showed up a few weeks ago looking for hand-outs. Sorry to any oogles out there, but it's true. People act like the magical notion of Equality means that everyone should have treated as if their opinions were equally important, but this isn't true in any practical sense. Really, politeness can get in the way of effective political organizing.

One of the many stupid and annoying things about how consensus processes happened during Occupy was that people who didn't intend to actually implement ideas often had very strong ideas about what other people should do. Sometimes people would show up from out of town and participate as if they were local, even if they planned to leave the next day. Should such people's voices carry equal weight to people who actually engaged in long term efforts to improve their communities? Should we really regard everyone's opinion as equally valid? I don't think so.

IF EQUALITY IS A VIRTUE, IS UNIQUENESS A VICE?

I have an idea for a short story that I may or may not write at some point.

In it, scientists come up with a penis enlargement surgery that actually works. Predictably, all the guys who always wished they had bigger dicks go nuts, and the race is in. People's dicks just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Eventually this causes all kinds of problems (use your imagination), and a movement emerges of people who insist that the only logical thing to pass laws that everyone's dick must be the exact same size. This results in a situation where some guys have to get mandatory penis reduction surgery and others have to get mandatory penis enlargement surgery.

Once this is accomplished, the reformers decide to keep going. They decide that it's oppressive that some people are short and some are tall. So they start making people the same height, which results in a significant percentage of people becoming disabled due to spinal injuries. So now a lot of people that wanted to be taller can't even walk, along with a lot of people who were perfectly happy with their height but were forced to undergo unnecessary surgery in the name of equality.

Then it is realized that the fact that some people are more attractive than others is horribly unfair to ugly people. Because no amount of plastic surgery will make really ugly people beautiful, it is deemed necessary to give those who unfairly won the genetic lottery to have "attractiveness reduction surgery".

In order to pay for all the surgeries, a shrinking class of workers has to work harder and harder and harder until they're working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. The biggest employer at this point is the medical-industrial complex, because all these unnecessary surgeries cause all kinds of fucked-up side effects. So that point most workers are toiling away so that everyone can get sicker.

Or something like that. I haven't thought of an ending. Any ideas?

Really, though, the Marxist attempt to make everyone equal is every bit as stupid as the society I just described. If it was true that people are inherently equal, there would be no reason to hold it up as a value. No one makes a big deal about the fact that we all breathe oxygen. Not only is it not true that all people are equal, the reverse is true! All people are, at least in some ways, unique. I think a ton of confusion have been caused by the concept of Equality, and I think we would be well to unpack it a bit more.

If there are some people with extraordinary gifts, they should be encouraged to be all that they can be, so long as they don't exploit or oppress others. We should celebrate people who have exceptional gifts, including those who choose to use their gifts to generate wealth.

Marxism sets up a false premise that entrepreneurial activity is inherently exploitative, and that just isn't so. Unfortunately, this creates a view that there is something immoral about having wealth.

IMHO, there are two main ways to generate wealth. One is to make it, and the other and to take it.

The honest to create wealth is to generate it. If you think of something that people want, then make it, then sell it to them, have you done anything wrong? Anarchism basically turns on the idea that all human relations should be voluntary and consensual. If you haven't coerced someone or used fraud to trick them into something they didn't mean to agree to, you're good, and you shouldn't feel guilty about this wealth. If you want to share it with others, great. But no one should be allowed to force you to give them a cut if you don't want to. Taxation is theft.

Capitalism, i.e. usury, is designed to enrich those who own capital which they can invest to order to generate a return.

Really, the worst political problem the world currently faces is that of an utterly depraved Parasite Class who produce nothing of value, yet extract the wealth produced by the real economy and divert it towards the rich. Think Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, Vanguard, etc... Can you imagine how much more wealth there would be to go around if it wasn't for the hoarding of the Parasite Class?

The Bolsheviks exterminated the Mennonites because they were landowners, because they had farms worth stealing.

Once you understand that bankers and industrialists bankrolled the Bolsheviks, you can see Marxism amounts to a Reverse Robin Hood thing - steal from the poor and give to the rich, while pretending to do the opposite. It's really quite amazing that they managed to pull it off. If pe

Okay, this comment is plenty long enough, because I really like that you're asking the right questions!

Really that I see Marxism as ultimately a kind of knockoff anarchism designed to thwart genuine revolutionaries, I like that you're willing to hear what I have to say.

I really think that the Marxist idea of equality needs to be mocked into the ground, because it's simply anti-human.

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Okay, here's that excerpt from Zoe Baker's interview:

Historical Anarchist Methods of Decision-Making

Having established what historical anarchists thought about democracy, I shall now turn to their views on collective systems of decision-making. Historical anarchists proposed a variety of different mechanisms through which decisions in general assemblies could be made. It can be difficult to establish how exactly historical anarchists made decisions because it is a topic which does not appear frequently in surviving articles, pamphlets or books. Those sources which are available do nonetheless establish a number of clear positions. Some anarchists advocated majority vote, whilst other anarchists advocated unanimous decisions in which everyone involved had to agree on a proposal. Other anarchists advocated both depending upon the context, such as the size of an organisation or the kind of decision being made. It should be kept in mind that what historical anarchists referred to as systems of ‘unanimous agreement’ was not modern consensus decision-making in different language. I have found no evidence of historical anarchists using the key features of consensus as a process, such as the specific steps a facilitator moves the meeting through or the distinction between standing aside and blocking a proposal.

Malatesta advocated a combination of unanimous agreement and majority voting. He wrote that in an anarchist society “everything is done to reach unanimity, and when this is impossible, one would vote and do what the majority wanted, or else put the decision in the hands of a third party who would act as arbitrator” (Malatesta n.d., 30). This position was articulated in response to other anarchists who thought that all decisions should be made exclusively by unanimous agreement and rejected the use of voting. He recalled that,

in 1893 … there were many Anarchists, and even at present there are a few, who, mistaking the form for the essence, and laying more stress on words than on things, made for themselves a sort of ritual of ‘true’ anarchism, which held them in bondage, which paralyzed their power of action, and even led them to make absurd and grotesque assertions. Thus going from the principle: The Majority has no right to impose its will on the minority; they came to the conclusion that nothing should ever be done without the unanimous consent of all concerned. But as they had condemned political elections, which serve only to choose a master, they could not use the ballot as a mere expression of opinion, and considered every form of voting as anti-anarchistic (Malatesta 2016, 17. Also see Turcato 2012, 141).

This opposition to all forms of voting allegedly led to farcical situations. This included endless meetings where nothing was agreed and groups forming to publish a paper and then dissolving without having published anything due to minor disagreements (Malatesta 2016, 17–8). From these experiences Malatesta concluded that “social life” would be impossible if “united action” was only allowed to occur when there was “unanimous agreement”. In situations where it was not possible to implement multiple solutions simultaneously or effective solidarity required a uniform action, “it is reasonable, fair and necessary for the minority to defer to the majority” (Malatesta 2016, 19). To illustrate this point Malatesta gave the example of constructing a railway. He wrote [...]

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If a railroad, for instance, were under consideration, there would be a thousand questions as to the line of the road, the grade, the material, the type of the engines, the location of the stations, etc., etc., and opinions on all these subjects would change from day to day, but if we wish to finish the railroad we certainly cannot go on changing everything from day to day, and if it is impossible to exactly suit everybody, it is certainly better to suit the greatest possible number; always, of course, with the understanding that the minority has all possible opportunity to advocate its ideas, to afford them all possible facilities and materials to experiment, to demonstrate, and to try to become a majority (Malatesta 2016, 18–9).

This is not to say that Malatesta viewed an anarchist society as one where people voted on every decision. He thought that farmers, for example, would not need to vote on what season to plant crops since this is something they already know the answer to. Given this, Malatesta predicted that over time people would need to vote on fewer decisions due to them learning the best solution to various problems from experience (Malatesta n.d., 30).

Malatesta was not alone in disagreeing with anarchists who opposed all systems of voting. During the 1907 International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam, the Belgian anarchist Georges Thonar argued that the participants should not engage in voting and declared himself “opposed to any vote”. The minutes of the congress claim that this caused “a minor incident. Some participants applaud noisily, while lively protest is also to be heard” (Antonioli 2009, 90). The French anarchist and revolutionary syndicalist Pierre Monatte then gave the following speech,

I cannot understand how yesterday’s vote can be considered anti-anarchist, in other words authoritarian. It is absolutely impossible to compare the vote with which an assembly decides a procedural question to universal suffrage or to parliamentary polls. We use votes at all times in our trade unions and, I repeat, I do not see anything that goes against our anarchist principles.

There are comrades who feel the need to raise questions of principle on everything, even the smallest things. Unable as they are to understand the spirit of our anti-parliamentarianism, they place importance on the mere act of placing a slip of paper in an urn or raising one’s hand to show one’s opinion (Antonioli 2009, 90–1).

Malatesta’s advocacy of majority voting was also shared by other anarchists. The Ukrainian anarchist Peter Arshinov wrote in 1928 that “[a]lways and everywhere, practical problems among us have been resolved by majority vote. Which is perfectly understandable, for there is no other way of resolving these things in an organization that is determined to act” (Arshinov 1928, 241).

The same commitment to majority voting was implemented in the CNT, which had a membership of 850,000 by February 1936. (Ackelsberg 2005, 62) The anarchist José Peirats explained the CNT’s system of decision-making as follows. The CNT was a confederation of trade unions which were “autonomous units” linked together “only by the accords of a general nature adopted at national congresses, whether regular or extraordinary”. As a result of this, individual unions were “free to reach any decision which is not detrimental to the organisation as a whole”. The “guidelines of the Confederation” were decided and directly regulated by the autonomous trade unions themselves. This was achieved through a system in which “the basis for any local, regional, or national decision” was “the general assembly of the union, where every member has the right to attend, raise and discuss issues, and vote on proposals”. The “resolutions” of these assemblies were “adopted by majority vote attenuated by proportional representation”. The agenda of regional or national congresses were “devised by the assemblies” themselves. These general assemblies in turn “debated” each topic on the agenda and after reaching an agreement amongst themselves elected mandated delegates to attend the congress as “the executors of their collective will” (Peirats 2011, 5).

Anarchists who advocated majority voting disagreed about whether or not decisions passed by majority vote should be binding on everyone involved in the decision-making process, or only those who had voted in favour of them. Malatesta argued that the congress resolutions of a federation should only be binding on the sections who had voted for them. He wrote in 1900 that since a federation is a free association which does not have the right “to impose upon the individual federated members” it followed that “any group just like any individual must not accept any collective resolution unless it is worthwhile and agreeable to them”. As a result, decisions made at the federation’s congresses, which were attended by mandated delegates representing each group that composed the federation, were “binding only to those who accept them, and only for as long as they accept them” (Malatesta 2019, 210, 206).

Malatesta repeated this view in 1927. He claimed that congresses of specific anarchist organisations, which are organisations composed exclusively of anarchist militants, “do not lay down the law” or “impose their own resolutions on others”. Their resolutions are only “suggestions, recommendations, proposals to be submitted to all involved, and do not become binding and enforceable except on those who accept them, and for as long as they accept them”. (Malatesta 2014, 489–90) The function of congresses was to,

maintain and increase personal relationships among the most active comrades, to coordinate and encourage programmatic studies on the ways and means of taking action, to acquaint all on the situation in the various regions and the action most urgently needed in each; to formulate the various opinions current among the anarchists and draw up some kind of statistics from them. (ibid, 489. See also ibid, 439–40)

Malatesta’s position on congress resolutions should not be interpreted as the claim that a person could do whatever they wanted within an organisation without consideration for the organisation’s common programme or how their actions effected others. In 1929 he clarified that within an organisation each member should “feel the need to coordinate his actions with those of his fellow members”, “do nothing that harms the work of others and, thus, the common cause” and “respect the agreements that have been made – except when wishing sincerely to leave the association”. He thought that people “who do not feel and do not practice that duty should be thrown out of the association” (Malatesta 1995, 107–8).

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Well, you've given me a lot of food for thought, and some references. I will think on this. It will take some time. Thank you!

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I would say Marxism was tried and failed in China and the USSR. It appears capitalism is going through its failing stage in the USA.

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Hmm... If you're coming from a Marxist background, I suppose I would suggest Emma Goldman, Murray Bookchin, and Abdullah Ocalan. I'm quite partial to the freakier, weirder side of anarchist thought, which is heavily influenced by shamanism, but those are the three thinkers I would suggest to a rationalist.

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I'm only familiar with Emma, if that gives you any indication as to the depths of my ignorance. Oh well. "I don't know" is the beginning of wisdom and all that. Besides, I'm in my 60s, facing cognitive decline, and the best medicine is learning new things.

Shamanism, eh? I'm something of a Norse pagan myself. I like the Norse gods because they are imperfect, like me, and because they are the gods of some of my ancestors. Familiar, so to speak. And I did grow up in the 70s, once had Castaneda's trilogy on my bookshelf, and I'm not ignorant of Native American shamanism.

Call it a fascination with some of my ancestors' opponents.

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Well, well, well, then, I think I've got something for you! Are you aware with the What is Politics? youtube channel? The guy is really into political anthropology and builds on Marx's ideas as well. I'd recommend starting here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJIHWk_M398

Basically, as part as I can tell, the European tradition of anarchism comes from four main sources - the indigenous critique, anabaptism, Sufism, and the Brethren of the Free Spirit, which was a medieval revolutionary secret society of Christian mystics. I'd recommend Paul Cudenec's The Stifled Soul of Humankind if you're interested in the connection between Sufism, anarchism, and secret societies.

It is undeniable, at this point, that indigenous intellectuals from Turtle Island had a massive influence on Enlightenment-era political theory. To cite one example, Rousseau, Voltaire and Montesquieu were all influenced by a Huron-Wendat orator named Kondiaronk, and the ideas that inspired the Great Law of Peace can be traced directly to intellectual tradition of Turtle Island, which has been written out of history.

So, yeah, basically anarchism is based on the Iroquoian Great Law of Peace, which also inspired the American Constitution. Kinda crazy that they managed to keep that under wraps so long, isn't it?

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