and grassroots : why would you link to that post of yours? It's a simple negation, the worst style of argument. "no he's not!". I would personally be ashamed if I was making such weak arguments, I certainly wouldn't link to them.
I thought it was a bit more involved than "no he's not!" The bottom line is that calling Lao Tzu an anarcho-
capitalist makes no sense, because there is no evidence that Lao Tzu had any similarities in belief with modern-day anarcho-capitalists, and "capitalism" did not exist at the time Lao Tzu (if he existed as a single person) wrote the Tao. You should probably take his comments within the context of ancient China, and for that reason you could at best claim he's an anarchist. It's simple really.
Also, you add literally nothing to the debate by smearing an entire field of belief without offering any concrete arguments. Anarcho-capitalism is more absurd than many other radical ideologies, and its supporters more ignorant. In the past, there were many teenage communists, now there seem to be many teenage libertarians.
Tropical, even if the labor theory of value is "discredited," which I've seen no concrete evidence of, the workability of a libertarian socialist or anarcho-syndicalist system is not dependent on it. In fact, some say that the Spanish anarchists in the 1930s did create an effective system of government despite its lack of centralization (and leftist politics). Here's an interesting breakdown of the system:
http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/spain.htmlAmong the issues taken up at the congress was the CNT’s vision for what kind of society it wanted to create, which it called “libertarian communism.” The vision document adopted by the Zaragoza congress attempted to synthesize the communalist anarchist and libertarian syndicalist influences on Spanish Left-libertarian thinking about post-capitalist society.
A dual structure of governance for the society was envisioned, based on both workplace assemblies and assemblies of residents in villages or neighborhoods. The workplace assemblies would elect workplace councils and be linked into national industrial federations, to manage the various industries.
Strong emphasis was placed on the “free municipality” and its autonomy, reflecting the communalist anarchist influence. This would be an institution rooted in assemblies of the residents in villages or urban neighborhoods. In a large city, such as Barcelona, the assemblies would elect the Municipal Council. The members of the council would continue to work a regular job in social production, and important issues would be referred back to the base assemblies for decision.
In the version of social planning proposed by Diego Abad de Santillan(9), the various self-managing national industrial federations would be linked into an Economics Council, as a coordinating body. But the actual plans were to be developed by regional and national congresses of delegates from the industrial federations, with the help of support staff. This is, in effect, a democratic, syndicalist version of central planning.
So what Public Opinion aggressively asserts can mostly be chalked up to teen angst. There are people who take this concept very seriously and have a developed idea of how it might work. We will never know if the Spanish anarchists could have been successful because the revolution was crushed - from the outside.
- By Tainari88
- By Pants-of-dog