Most major OSS projects are controlled by a few companies who pay developers to work on them. They're more like industry consortiums than DIY anarchist collectives.
The solution isn't to destroy capitalism or exclude industrial companies from participation. We tried that a century ago. It went badly, because, as it turns out, capitalism is better at limiting the damage done by ambitious psychopaths than the alternative systems are; if Beria had been born in Ohio maybe he would have ended up running a soap company or a division of GE instead of mass-murdering dissidents.
Similarly, the GPL (and, to a lesser extent, non-copyleft open-source licensing) reduces the damage selfish companies can do to software projects and the people and companies that depend on them.
We need to figure out how to do the same thing to drug companies and the FDA, because they are just killing far too many people and causing far too much needless suffering today.
I think that's the main reason that most sane leftists* are some flavour of anarchist these days.
* not including social democrats/other liberals in the "leftist" bracket.
That sounds compatible with mere free trade amongst men without any sort of socialism. Seems like leftism wants some involuntary reallocation of capital, but maybe I'm mistaken. If they don't I'd say they're just charitable capitalists.
Or say I have a full fledged industrial scale wave soldering, mass PnP, full inventory of millions of dollars worth of components. I need it to feed my family, I'm not going to just hand it to you after I gained it through consensual trade fair and square. Doesn't that require coercion? I'm not just going to give up my goods I worked hard for, what's going to happen when the comrades see the loaded barrel of a rifle protecting that which feeds my family? I think a lot of people needing to feed there families are going to have a lot of rifles, and they're not going to be very happy about someone coming along to "open up access" to means of production of their business.
When you take my means of production, you deny ME access to what I gained without coercion, by using coercion.
This all just sounds like a violent way of less efficiently allocating capital, under the guise of non-coercion. Access to property should require consent, otherwise you have coercion. Seems to me free market trading of private property fits a lot more neatly with the oxford definition of anarchism.
The only way in which you "own" something while you're not directly using it is by the implicit threat of the police and the military. Its kind of ironic that you accuse anarchists of violence while simultaneously withholding resources with threats of direct violence.
You have to understand, we're talking about an alternative economic system here, not an immediate action. Anarchism in practice within capitalism is things like this article, or mutual aid - people helping out others in need,and cooperating on mutual benefit. Anarchists also squat unused properties to feed and house the homeless, or come together to form cooperative societies in a few places like Oaxaca and Rojava.
> When you take my means of production, you deny ME access to what I gained without coercion, by using coercion.
That's not true - under anarchism, you would have access to use the lab, but so would other people. It would be available in common.
>That's not true - under anarchism, you would have access to use the lab, but so would other people. It would be available in common.
So I bought it and now what if I need it 24/7 to run PnP on boards that pay for my family? You're gonna tank the economy by repurposing capital used efficiently and profitably and instead just open up for somebody to just take over the production capability I paid for? That's not consensual.
>The only way in which you "own" something while you're not directly using it is by the implicit threat of the police and the military.
No I own it through consensual trade. The only way it is taken away is either consensual, by giving my permission to transact it away or for someone else to use coercion and take it.
There are a few different economic models within leftism, including market socialism, which still involves trade but replaces corporations with worker cooperatives. Obviously that's incompatible with anarchism but they can exist alongside each other and mixed together - these ideas don't have to be purist.
> So I bought it and now what if I need it 24/7 to run PnP on boards that pay for my family? You're gonna tank the economy by repurposing capital used efficiently and profitably and instead just open up for somebody to just take over the production capability I paid for? That's not consensual.
Again, under an anarchist system you wouldn't need to pay to feed your family. Imagine for a moment, our current society but instead of everybody withholding their goods with demand of payment, these goods are just available to those who need them. No currency, no trade, just sharing and cooperation. Operation of machinery can still be restricted to the qualified through a syndicate (kind of like a medieval guild) but the labour is performed cooperatively. You could still do the job you love (if you love it - otherwise, you're free to explore other options), your family would be fed, you would have a house and so on. I wouldn't be in favour of any economic system that increased the amount of human suffering. I like people, I have a lot of empathy.
>Again, under an anarchist system you wouldn't need to pay to feed your family
Perhaps, but what if no one wishes to feed me for free voluntarily. Won't I be forced to either engage in trade, do everything myself, or take it by force? What if I want to spin up my PnP machine, make some boards, and trade it with somebody who's not down with the whole make stuff without money and hope it all works out. I'm not going to let you stop me, are you going to come kill me or what's going to happen?
My personal view of what ends up happening to leftist communities is their either become dystopian to ensure your property is now the public's property, slide into democracies, or go into limited-government libertarian type scenarios. The latter is basically what Rojava is in practice and kind of my experience with the Kurds in general who I would describe as basically very generous capitalists who just want to chill in the fucking mountains away from the 4 nasty governments surrounding them.
If you can keep it small like a family unit some communist like organization may stay together, although even families can have a hard time with it. You need the consent of everyone for that sort of thing to be non-coercive, and you may not be able to get it.
> Guess people like me gotta be put in the gulag.
Again, you're thinking of MLs. My primary value is decreasing human suffering and increasing preference fulfilment. Neither of those are fulfilled by senseless ideological violence.
> My personal view of what ends up happening to leftist communities is their either become dystopian to ensure your property is now the public's property, slide into democracies, or go into limited-government libertarian type scenarios.
I'd rather live under a social democratic capitalist society like I currently do than the USSR. Freedom is important - I want to increase it, not decrease it. There's plenty of room for democracy within anarchism, and anarchism is the original source of the term "libertarian" so yes I agree on the latter point - the main point of disagreement is whether capitalism can really be libertarian. I think that replacing a competitive, isolating economy with a cooperative sharing economy would be a positive thing for everybody.
I think the kurds are a good example of an incremental step in the right direction - their economy is more oriented towards sharing and cooperation, which is inherently a step away from capitalism because capitalism relies on individualistic trade negotiations rather than sharing.
Edit: I just thought, if you've watched the later seasons of The Walking Dead, the communities are a pretty good example of anarchist community, including the union-of-unions part.
For clarity, by "socialism" I don't mean Robin Hood socialism, taking from the rich to give to the poor; that's coercive. I mean that socialists aim for a more-equal society. So I'm saying that anarchists are people that aim for a more equal society, and hope to achieve that using processes and structures that minimise hierarchy.
As I said before, though, you might benefit from reading at the introductory section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism.
I'm not saying leftists can't exist in anarchism as some sort of pact or contract amongst leftist, in the sense of without coercive hierarchy. But I don't see how anarchism is inherently leftist. If leftism means socialism or some form of redistributing property involuntarily, that sounds coercive.
Voluntary exchange of property and capital is the opposite of coercion. It seems capitalism fits in neatly with anarchism.
Which Oxford definition? You've cited "The Oxford Dictionary" up-thread. There's a bunch of online lexicographical resources that are unrelated to the OED, but trade on its name and reputation.
At any rate, a brief definition from a concise lexicon is no substitute for doing some proper reading on the subject. And even reading will leave you pretty confused about how it can possibly work; participation in an anarchist collective might blow your mind.
Anarchism isn't some cursory subject for me. Someone up thread mentioned Rojava as an example of something closest to an anarchist collective. I went there and lived there. What I found was voluntary trade which we commonly call capitalism. I find this to be compatible with anarchism when trades are made voluntarily and not say, by strong arm of government forcing how you trade with people or the strong arm of some "anarchist" "opening up access" to your capital.
Allowing workers to join the board, perhaps as a response to an all-out strike, might be a step towards worker's collectives.
It's much easier to articulate the objectives than the path.
If you can find some other way to allocate payment to workers that's fine if everyone is agreement. Me, I like commodities and currencies. If not dollars a gold bar will work fine, you needn't pay me in fractions of a factory floor or whatever. I ought to be able to negotiate with a factory owner to be paid that way.
Here in the UK, all of those things were public, until they were privatised in the '80s. I'm in a position to compare the service we used to have with the one we have now. In every case, they're worse (I deliberately didn't mention telecoms). The only service here that hasn't yet been completely privatised yet is health; unfortunately it's rapidly being privatised, and becoming more like the US system (I've spent a fair bit of time recently in hospitals and clinics).
The NHS is paid for collectively; "free at the point of delivery", as they say (which is a lie). But they do refuse to do some expensive treatments; many other treatments have very long waiting lists (hip replacements). They only have to squeeze harder to force more people into private treatment.
NHS would not exist. It is an institution of violence, funded coercively.
Goodness, what a weird thing to say. It is Britian's most-loved institution.
I've never met anyone in Britain that disapproves of the NHS. We were all born in the NHS, doctors visited us as children when we got chicken pox, and the whole thing was organised so as to provide the best response they could to the public's needs. Village hospitals, visiting midwives, comprehensive GP service.
We were never asked to pay.
So are you seriously advocating a "system" where all services are provided by private businesses that are free to withdraw services at any time? Where different services (IC, CT scan, MRI, ENT, surgery) are all provided by different companies in different locations? Where unprofitable locations get zero service?
Even bosses love the NHS - it means they don't have to include insurance in the comp.
Thatcher privatised nearly every government-run business operation, but she balked at privatising the NHS. It was too popular.
Of course it's funded coercively; it's funded from general taxation. But "violence"? What can you possibly mean?
I didn't say everything has to be profitable. There's plenty of ways to consensually operate without profit. Farmer do it in the US with coops and pooled buying of feed and fertilizer and all manner of other stuff. Charities also do things unprofitably but consensually. I'm good with whatever non-coercive way you find to get your CT scan.
I have heard that KAR operates on roughly-anarchist lines, and works well; I'm very interested in large-scale, working, contemporary anarchist and collective societies. The only other one I can think of is Catalunya, which is sometimes described as anarchist. It appears to me to be mostly capitalism with a strong public sector, along with some major collectivised industries. But I'm not familiar with how decisions are made.
I'm very interested to hear that you've spent time in Rojava.
[Edit] Clarified, I hope.
All of the time I spent in Rojava was as a member of YPG. It was a few months. Most of the time was on border or self-defense tabor for defense against ISIS. My contributions were not particularly note worthy, mostly just helping them maintain their positions.
Naturally my view was not the best view of civilian. But I did travel through much of the territory and witness the people. There is definitely class and considerable disparity in quality of life, as their are nicer condos in the city cores and people in slums in the perimeters. Capitalist vendors are in the cities selling anything from cell phones to nuts. Most of the vendors were your garden variety 3rd world stalls kind of like how the storage facilities look with the metal sliding gates in front that they open up when ready for business.
Middle East culture is in general very hospitable and once taken as a guest you are taken care of until you decide to leave. But If you just entered the country as a civil citizen I'm not sure you'd find your lot any better off than in the traditional capitalist government in KRG. Qamislo and Erbil for instance are worlds apart in what they offer, although the wars are no doubt a large part of that.
It's my understanding there is collective union for some of the farming, oil extraction, and maybe some other natural resource extraction. Traditionally the kurds have also gotten a lot of income from smuggling due to their unique position in the mountains but I do not know how that is interconnected with governance.
OK, I was referring to the region in Iraq. My mistake. I need to get better-informed. Thanks for your account.
From the language you use, I suspect you are a USAian; the term "leftist" seems to be used mainly as a term USAians use to express their contempt for socialism. In most of the world, "socialism" is not a bad word. But the term "leftist" is often used by authoritarians to describe the "terrorists" they're using the army to suppress.
I'm ok with socialism when it's done consensually. If a bunch of people want to go live on a commune, more power to them. It's when you come for the equipment and capital I use to manufacture things and feed my family, is when you're gonna start needing the commune comrades to enact violence if you want to steal that from me. And to do that seems.... coercive and non-anarchistic.
My own political views are neither here nor there. I live in the UK, but I don't support Labour; I don't think Labour is socialist, and I do think they're authoritarian and militarist. I don't know how you can scale up anarchism from a collective to a nation; I do know when things are going in the wrong direction.
> I'm ok with socialism when it's done consensually.
You mean, when you can opt out, apparently.
Yes precisely, this to me is the essence of anarchism. To have the free will to opt-out or opt-in to any voluntary exchange without coercion. To keep my factory floor if I like, and if people voluntarily want to buy enough widgets from me that I can build a space ship, that is great for everyone because I've given the world lots of value and they've voluntarily given it back to me in exchange for that value.
It's really strange to me that leftist anarchists and capitalist anarchist are such bitter enemies. I think both can survive under the banner of a system without coercion. Anarchist socialism is merely what happen when some group of people consent to each other to share their resources. Those that don't consent and want to use free trade instead look more like capitalists can continue to do so. Personally I pick the latter because I think it will bring me more prosperity, but I'm very live and let live and can see both ideologies living peacefully side by side so long as no one coercively tries to take the property of another.
Not enemies; I don't have bitter enemies. I just see opposition to capitalism as a pretty fundamental aspect of anarchism. I'm not gatekeeping "anarchist". I see you as hijacking the term; a capitalist anarchist is not an anarchist, it's a libertarian, or an individualist. I think you know this.
I think your persistent claims that small traders are capitalists is disingenuous. There's nothing against trade in anarchism or in socialism. Trade is not the same as capitalism.
I'm afraid I don't like being referred to by you as a "leftist" - nobody calls themselves a leftist. That's a term used by people who dislike socialism and want to portray socialists as "bad". So I think I will not respond to this thread again.
[Edited for grammar, mainly]
Ok, you won't be missed (nor remembered), pathetic leftist gate-keeper of the word anarchism. Hopefully you find a True Scotsman worthy of the title.
> choose to use "anarchism" to mean a non-leftist ideology
I thought using leftist was offensive (even though I didn't mean it offensively) and you asked me not to? You're a hypocrite too.
>you should expect that most people will misunderstand you
I expect you will misunderstand because of your willful ignorance of the term. Calling it 'hijacking' is a lot different than calling it different from whatever looks mainstream to you. There is no mainstream brand of anarchism, it's an ideology without coercion that can manifest in many ways.
Spare me the speech about politeness. You called me a hijacker of a term and say "I think I know this." No I do not, in fact I know the opposite. I think you're an arrogant and self-serving keeper of the word anarchism, one who tries to hide their vulgarity in pretty language and has the gaul to act like a victim for a curt retort.
Do not expect me to censor myself going forward, however. I understand that could result in being banned. I'm OK with that, as I'm not really interested in communicating in a place with censorship.
I admit my use of "pathetic" was self-defense from being accused of being a hijacker, which I found to be a personal attack against something objectively untrue based on the Oxford English definition of the word "anarchism."