Anarcho-Capitalism V. Mutualism

I. Intro
As I can see my essay has generated enough concern from several people on both sides of the fence. So much so that I had a Facebook friend actually write and critique my initial Transitions paper. Now I am replying to his points and my understandings concerning all this conflict. I have taken his paper and broke it down essentially to the substance behind his ideas, so that way I might be able to respond to them. This paper is going to be a long one so expect this paper to be broken up into at least 3 parts, and potentially more. I feel that people are not getting my point, to my advocating of this philosophy. Therefore, I am going to first reply to the Critical Analysis of my Transitions paper. After that I am going to in one sense have an addendum to my initial Transitions paper while trying to summarize my responses in this paper as a whole. My hope is that you will understand and perhaps even better agree with what I am suggesting.

II. My Response To Dustin's Critique on Libertarian Socialism

In your first paragraph, the first thing that I noticed you were saying was that "I choose first before I needed to take orders," I find it a bit of a double standard of one who claims to support the idea of freedom and yet supports a system in which they put themselves into a position in which they would be a sub-ordinate. After all, taking orders implies automatically that there is someone giving orders. The whole point to Libertarian Socialism is to free people from these positions of being sub-ordinate and allowing people to truly have control over their own livelihoods, rather than allowing someone "higher" than me to control it.

After this you claim that "Economic Democracy is Disastrous" and you express your fear of it when you say that the "Masses determine who gets the wealth" seeing this as a violation of "individual free will," let me say that I think you are thinking of me as a state socialist (aka Marxist) who would allow the masses in some social democratic system to force "equality" of pay down people's throats. Let me be very clear from the beginning here, I disagree with this type of thinking, with you! I am saying that Democracy in the workplace with people of equal power and equal say is not only preferable but right because they are the ones putting in the most amount of labor into the firm, also this would go against the freedom philosophy to sub-ordinate oneself to a higher up because it implies someone is telling you what to do, rather then you having say in what ought to be done. Again, this comes back to the idea of truly owning your livelihood rather than someone owning it for you, which one of these is a true expression of individual free will? I am not saying that the boss will be kicked out, but now at least everyone below him is equal to him so he can still keep his livelihood while working with others and doing the same work as his fellow laborers. People ought to have the opportunity to express their views and opinions and benefit from them to the fullest extent possible, in the group they work with. It's not 51% of the population in a given area saying what will be done to everyone in the population; it's only the people in the firm or organization. So there is no one person dictating what everyone else will do and how much they get. I am sure when you are in a group of people you may not always get your way, that's part of living in society, but at least you are on an equal playing field.

Finally, you speak of the "Denial of the Fruit of Ones Labors" but you need to understand that from the Libertarian Socialist perspective, if all the laborers are doing 90% of the laboring, yet collect 10% of the fruit of such labor (which then has to be divided between each laborer, which is a fraction of a fraction they really are entitled to); meanwhile the management does 10% of the work [which the laborers are themselves more than competent to handle anyway] and collects 90% of the fruit of ANOTHERS Labor, you need to ask yourself: Who Is REALLY Being Denied The Fruit of Their Labor? I say the one who does the most work, not the one who sits and reaps massive sums while they do very little. If you can see it in the political class, why can't you see it in the capitalist class?

My reply to your Second Paragraph is going to be short; I asked that people view the 1st definition from Urban Dictionary on Libertarian Socialism not the 2nd or beyond that. That is my understanding that I wish to convey not the other definitions. As for your third paragraph it seemed more an extension to your second which I have already replied too, so I am moving on now to the next two paragraphs.

In your 4th and 5th Paragraph you say that "not all hierarchies are oppressive, violent, and or domineering," of course I beg to differ. The nature of hierarchical relationships implies that, if the one who is lower does not do the will of the one who is higher than you are going to regret it, this regret can only come about in the form of punishment, there is no WE in a hierarchy there is only ME. Whereas in a horizontal structure there is a WE and that is where there is true mutual respect and benefit, no tilted tables, so to speak.

This next idea you uttered was, "Workers Lack the Big Picture, Therefore Owners/Managers Are Needed" this in my opinion betrays even the Market Anarchist perspective. Consider this; you think people in general do not need a central planner in order to respond to the constantly changing environment around them because you think the central planner is the same type of entity who is trying to give a bigger picture on the overall economy and force that picture on everyone else. I am renouncing central planning in all its forms, if there is no need for a central planner at the macro level then there is no need for the central planner/management at any level, unless people from the very bottom wish to make this so, either way the people at the very bottom will respond and cooperate with each other in the changing circumstance both within the firm and outside of the firm. This statement here I must say is inconsistent with maintaining your expressed agreement that a central planner is wrong, you have only rejected a manifestation of central planning not the idea of a central planner in substance. A Central Planner on anything, which comes from a top-down structure, is wrong, always.

The next thing you said was something that is common sense and agreeable enough, that "The Employer Hires Based ON Skills or Time, that The Employer Themselves Does Not Have." To this I would say I do not have a disagreement with you on this, all I am saying is that the person should be a co-owner in the business operations, again treating the person as an equal both in pay and in power rather than an inferior on the pecking order. The employment process I feel ought to be made by the people in the department that person is applying to work in; they truly know when they need the help, not when the decision is arbitrarily imposed from on high. After all in a competitive free market system, there won't be a shortage of employment possibilities.

Finally I am going to briefly say about the Sixth Paragraph that it seemed to me as an Aggregate of other ideas I previously replied to, with Exception to the fact that, I am not denying anybody starting a business, small business are not so much of concern as much as big businesses are, the size of the firm will inevitably dictate the treatment of those who work in it. I have an essay prepared on this issue to explain myself further, it is titled "Synthesis and Progression of a Stateless Society" in the notes section, it will be uploaded around the same time as this paper.

In your seventh paragraph you speak "On the denial of hiring people" first of all let me say, that at least in part I responded to this hiring and in effect firing claim in the second paragraph above this one. Let me also say that, I do not see a lack of motivation when one truly owns their livelihood, but I do see a lack of motivation when someone else owns your labor, your time, your energy, and your livelihood. I think a person who really has the ability to reap 90% of what they sow will be more likely to be energized and aware then if they were reaping say 10% of what they sow, I think your sense of motivation is misdirected. I know that I would be much more awake knowing I really am a decision maker and I am one among equals, that my actions really do have an effect on others then if we were working for just some other guy. It seems dull and boring, that's why I think work is soul killing, it's not energizing because they are victims of the top-down control in the capitalist system.

Nonetheless I digress, the next idea you propose is that you think "Capitalism allows for the Division of Labor at its best," to this I would say, the *free market* allows for the division of labor at its best, not capitalism. A truly freed market would not have top-down hierarchies, I think I explained how the laborer is more motivated in my system then in the capitalist system in the paragraph above. It bears repeating however, if I truly own my own livelihood I am bound to call up all my faculties and specialized skills in order to see my firm succeed with those I work with on an equal playing field than, if I merely worked for someone else who owns my own livelihood, in such a top-down hierarchy I would be turned off from working so hard and calling up all my faculties and skills seeing perhaps the discouraging signs in a top-down system (e.g. Favoritism, Nepotism, etc -- ). At least in my anti-capitalist free market system, you are on a leveled playing field with all your co-workers/owners and you can try to get your idea accepted into the firm by others who you know will do the work.

So to summarize my point, Socialism does not infringe on the division of labor, but it also supplements the specialist with leadership experience and encourages them to be even better at what they do because they have stake in the outcome that capitalism just doesn't provide '" People who deserve a managing role do not get it in the capitalist system, because it is filled in by the favoritisms of the business manager the same way a political bureaucrat shows favoritism '" Capitalism may sound all "clean and efficient" but lacks the human element.

III. Dustin's Scenario [Paragraphs: 8 TO 11]

Okay from your Eighth paragraph to your Eleventh paragraph you have given me a scenario. I have really only gotten two issues that I can talk about in this section of your paper. The first issue is the statement that "Rent is banned in Socialism," and you would be right, I am not going to shy away from this. A Land Rent is a Land Tax and a Land Tax is a Land Rent. They both imply that I need to pay for the "privilege" to live here. Likewise, they both explicitly show that the person you need to pay does not use or occupy the place that he decided to rent out. I am against Feudalism, I think it is wrong to pay an absentee landlord the privilege to live in/on something he says he owns on paper but does not prove in either use or occupancy. I am directly using the property and I am directly occupying it. Although admittingly I wonder about certain circumstances where the landowner lives downstairs and he rents out the top half of his home, I find myself asking if it is okay time to charge rent under these circumstances. But in order to remain consistent, I would have to say "no" because, I am the one using and occupying the top half of the building, in which case I would ask why would someone only use half of what they are entitled too? Renting is not use, but storage is use, because you are using the space you already occupy to hold on to your possessions. Of course, its one thing to have a guestroom and its one thing to open your home to a stranger and in good faith allow them to stay there, but to bind them in contract to hold them to your will to pay up or else is not a true agreement, this true agreement I will expand on later.

The next thing that I am not sure about, but you said that "Selling the house would provide them with a scant value of all the work they put into it," my question would be usually when one puts in a lot of work into something it is usually improved and value goes up on the property so how is it possible to lose value on said home if it is a member of the Homeowners Association and has been maintained and worked on for the past 40 years? Unless this is through state interventionism in the economy in which case this is not even part of the hypothetical societies we are trying to build, in my society the value of the house would have gone up and stayed up considering what it once was before they worked on the property.

In your Twelfth, Thirteenth and I believe your Fourteenth paragraph you speak of the whole rent issue, when you say "Tax is Not Rent" and when you say "If I can make it; I Can Rent It" but perhaps my explanations above (as in the whole essay) will help you understand where I am coming from, if not perhaps my ideas in my addendum/conclusion section might express more clearly what I am trying to convey, moving on from this. I agree with you that "Demanding Tribute in a Conquered Area is wrong," we both agree that it is theft, because it requires non-defensive force.

The other issue is that our disagreement with profit is not profit in quantity, but in quality. I think I made it clear earlier in my writings above. However to make it clear again, the laborer is putting in 90% of the work and yet reaps only 10% of the fruits of his labor because he is working for someone and this someone like the rent and like the tax is paying for the *privilege* to use the means of production. To equate this in a way you will understand, it is no different than the political class doing 10% administrative work where they just tell people what to do in an arbitrary manner and yet they can set an arbitrary percentage that they will take away and use for themselves. If you can't see the connection by now then I do not know what to say, but if you do but still support it, I am going to have to call you out on being inconsistent. Now let me clarify, The Laborers/Workers put in 90% of the work collectively, and that 10% that they currently do not do, they can do on their own, making it a full 100% contribution, therefore collectively the laborers/workers ought to own and have say over that 100% they put in.

Let me conclude my response to you regarding your Fifteen, Sixteen, and Seventeenth Paragraphs by saying that they seemed to me to be essentially a repetition/summary on previous paragraphs. I have no problem with the second to last paragraph so long as the company is run by those who truly work the means of production, the laborers themselves. That is my point.

IV. Conclusion

It is now time to offer my addendum to my thoughts as I have been going deeper in the past week to unravel what I intuitively felt would be something I could agree with. Everything from here to the end of this paper is going to be an explanation and summarization of the past week. The first thing I noticed that as soon as I was talking about this theory people assumed that suddenly I want to centrally plan everyone's life. Let me EMPHASIZE THAT I Am *NOT* A Marxist, So Stop Thinking I am trying to control the economy through a central planner or what have you! This is why I said in the paper that I wrote and that encouraged one individual to critique that, IF I oppose a top-down control in anything, what Makes You Think I support central planning? The only thing really needing control is the firm itself, control in the hands of the people who actually do the work, which are the laborers themselves.

In a private conversation off of Facebook, a Facebook friend of mine gave an imaginary scenario of two people who possess no other property but themselves, two isolated individuals who live with one another. One individual was good at making clothes by hand but the other individual was good at tinkering and making machines, so he produces a machine that only he knows how it would work and yet makes clothes at a faster rate than the individual who makes clothes by hand. This individual asked me, would the individual who knows how to make clothes by hand and managed to learn how the machine works, have a right to take it from the guy who made the machine, even if he requests not to?

Aside from the inconsistency of say "where did this guy get the supplies to build a machine" or "what about other issues of survival," at the time I was not sure, but now I can answer that first of all, if there are truly only two People they Would Agree to Cooperate and Survive, only a fool would say no in these circumstances and if a fool has something that can help me survive better and he is not using or occupying it (after all there is no property, so it's not like the guy who made the machine could store it, in which case it is theft) then I am on perfect grounds to use it for myself. This agreement would not need a contract that would need to be backed up with force because it is an agreement in good faith and a true agreement where they would agree to Put Their Strengths together to survive. The whole scenario looking back on it is extremely simplified so much so, that it proves my point that two people will cooperate, not compete or not share to make the most amount of clothes, plus the other needs and possessions needed to survive.

I just want to clarify that in private conversation I had people disputing the property rights of A Home and A Business; I just want to clarify on the Understanding of Property Rights in both. A Household has no hierarchy in it, save the hierarchy of parents and children because that is there responsibility, but any other form of top-down control, implies that people need a mommy or daddy to discipline them and keep an eye on them, no wonder people have such a hard time growing up because they are treated like children by all the know-it-alls. I digress; the capitalist workplace has vertical/hierarchical structure. However, the laborers are themselves responsible for each other, lest one thinks that laborers are children, which sound awfully elitist of one to think that, and elitism is against the concept of freedom. The socialist workplace is horizontal in structure everyone who truly does the laboring decides how much to take for themselves only after they pay the expenses and any projects they are trying to finance in the workplace. It is no different than one man making the decisions, but this time everyone is making the decisions, adding their opinions to the operations of the firms because they are really doing the work and truly own their own livelihoods.

The next thing that I want to expand on is this debate regarding the Mutualism Property Debate; it would seem to me that this debate could go on forever as to what the understanding of use and occupation means. Let me say that I am going to use a scenario of my own The Unlocked and Occupied Restroom Scenario to help people understand the Proper Understanding of Occupation and Use. But first understand that when a(n) (anarcho-)capitalist would say in disagreement over the Mutualist understanding of property they will say, things like "what if I leave my house for a weekend, and other people break into my house and start living in it!" But anyone with any good sense knows that leaving one's house for a weekend does not mean you abandoned it, by any conception of "abandoned." Mutualists DO NOT claim that leaving your house for a weekend means abandoning it, either. Naturally the question arises as to who determines what is abandoned and what is not. Thinking about it more, this is a pretty pointless question since all such social rules are determined by the society itself, not any specific ideology:

>>> Here is My Scenario: I was in a fast food chain one day, and I needed to use the bathroom, and in this fast food chain is one of those single use bathrooms, now I really had to go so I just assumed that if its lock someone is in it and if it's not no one is in it because usually in those single-use bathrooms normally there is a lock on the door to let you know it is occupied. Well to my surprise I saw someone using the restroom yet they forgot to lock the door (thank god the person was already done doing their business and was only washing their hands HaHa). Do you know what I did? I walked out and waited until this person left the place truly unoccupied. Use this same understanding for the property rights of a homeowner; consider this also that this scenario shows what happens when the door to an occupied home is unlocked.

Mutualism in its assumption of rights regarding possessions (large or small) is flexible and circumstantial. If you go on vacation for 2 two months, and you see stuff missing when you return, someone broke in and stole it (no one has the right to squatting or appropriate the home and the contents inside and call it theirs), what is the proof of this theft? The proof lies in the fact that you have in this home of yours your other possessions. It is proof of occupation and use! The beauty to this scenario is that it assumes you did not take the necessary security to secure your possessions. Like any other proper form of Anarchy, mutualism does not set specific rules under which free people must be forced to accept, but rather tells us what is morally justifiable and what is not, in view of specific social values to be pursued, leaving the establishment of rules for one's daily life to the people themselves.

Of course the biggest objection to the whole debate I hear is "But Its Voluntary!" Yet I have to say that it's Only Voluntary Because I am Not Left with an Alternative, Mutualism is such an alternative. I have written on this elsewhere but, I am going to bring it up again. Lets say, I had to go and live in any large region of the world but I can voluntarily choose where I want to go in that given large region. I look and I say, "But I don't want to live in this large region, I want to live in THAT large region!" The person says, "You can live anywhere you choose, and associate with anyone you choose, and do whatever you choose here in THIS large region." Am I really left with a choice? In this case, capitalism is THIS large region and anything else outside this perspective/ideology is not allowed or not do-able. Likewise, just because I can voluntarily choose does not mean I am presented with the boundless things to choose from. Voluntary decision making is ONLY part of a free and open society not the whole thing.

One thing that often turns me off to Anarcho-Capitalism is this idea of Contracts that are backed up with threats of force. It would appear that in Anarcho-Capitalism one seems to NOT to be living in a free society but an enslaved society bounded to the Letter of the Law, forced to act in certain manners each one along the way encourages you to act in this manner with the threat of non-defensive force should you not comply. I believe True Agreements need no violence to back them up, if the person lies then the agreement is ended, if they betray the agreement then the agreement is ended, but a real, true, and MUTUAL Agreement needs no threats of non-defensive force in order to coerce people to comply with the demands of the agreement. There's a difference in my opinion between putting agreements on paper to clarify any misunderstandings as opposed to threatening the parties with non-defensive force if one or more parties fails to comply. In one sense I can see in this Mutualist/ Non-Contract theory society essentially operating in the same manner as say E-Bay does with people who sell things on E-bay, some people call it Fides, others call it a reputation, this alone should be incentive enough to keep ones word and to let others know that you keep your word, in one sense it is also reference and your resume as well.

Before I conclude this paper I want to speak on the Nature of the State and its Relation to Capitalism (regardless if Traditional State, exists), this was utter by someone on Facebook, unfortunately I do not know who it was that I can give credit to, but in exchange for me quoting this person, they may quote my work if they so choose. Nonetheless this person says the following: "If you smash the state you get rid of capitalism. The first states were the first capitalists. When capitalism came to dominate the world in the 17th-18th century, capitalists worked hand in hand with the state to establish the system. They have continued to do so since. The association of capitalism with anything that might be called a free market is a lie. The defining trait of capitalism is the accumulation of capital. The accumulation of capital comes about through theft from those who produce goods. This theft is what made the state possible in the first place, and requires the power of the state to maintain it. In a very real sense, capitalism IS the state."

I think you understand that what this person is saying is no different then what I have said when I compare the political class acting in the same manner (with that top-down control hierarchy in place) as the capitalist/management class. You feel, as I do that, we do not need sleazy politicians dictating to us how to live our lives, meanwhile they do not know what is going on in reality on the ground floor called the country, but I am equating this to being no different than how I think we do not need the greedy and power hungry boss/management who does very little work (like the politician) and then arrogantly claims to dictate arbitrarily the how much and how to do, what to do, and when to do in our lives while in the firm. They all act this way, it's not like I can leave one firm and go to another to expect something different, and so long as the system of top-down control exists this is bound to happen. There is nothing voluntary about choosing the same substance that manifests itself in different forms. Choosing between different companies, to me is like choosing between "the guy on the left and the guy on the right" to all of us!

However, I want to end this paper on a more Peaceful Conclusion. We all agree that we want to have freedom of trade and we want that freedom of association. The words I think get in the way and that's why some people are able to see it and agree with it while others see it and do not agree with it or they do not see it at all and attack it vehemently. We are all in support of finding Alternatives to the current way that society has been setup, at the very least in form if not in entirely in substance. Finally allow me to conclude by saying that two other Articles will be published on my page, if this essay has not cut it for you, maybe the other two articles I will publish to my profile be there to serve you better in trying to convey my understanding of where I am coming from. In fact I highly recommend reading those too before you reply to this.