[Piccolo]

Kevin Carson has an interesting article regarding the essentially statist nature of capitalism throughout its entire history. This is different from the usual right-libertarian argument that “corporatism” or “crony capitalism” is some kind of distortion of capitalism.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/27/ ... rporatism/

Any thoughts on this subject?

[quetzalcoatl]

This article broaches some of the points I make in conversations with An-Caps. I'd like to see some of our free-market advocates discuss their attitude towards "...illegitimate state interventions in the market on behalf of plutocrats and big business: “Intellectual property,” absentee title to vacant and unimproved land and corporate limited liability, for example..."

The use of the word "corporatism" in the article is ill-advised, as it shares the same name as a pre-existing and well developed political philosophy. A better word for corporate hegemony is desirable.

[blackjack21]

Capitalism isn't inherently statist, but achieving government objectives with businesses can often render a statist implementation of capitalism. When the modern pro-growth groups talk of capitalism, they are talking much more about lowering barriers to entry and allocating capital more efficiently. Early mercantilism controlled trade, because they were using the proceeds to pay for a Navy too. Part of why mercantilism ultimately failed is that market forces typically do prevail--the Triangle Trade undermined the Navigation Acts, and the taxation on trade ultimately produced a revolution that brought down the first British Empire in North America. Pre-capitalist economies like the trade guilds of Medieval Europe were defacto monopolies and barriers to entry to keep the wages of skilled workers high. We see this today mostly in healthcare, law, government employment, public utilities and mass transit. However, it's really only health care that requires very high skill.

However, there are other matters: for example, the British Empire and the United States were both embarking on major rail building projects in the 19th Century to further their imperial and national interests respectively, as were the Russians (Trans-Siberian). State involvement had a great deal to do with capital formation, which is another aspect of capitalism. States, with their power of taxation, could use taxation as a form of capital formation even though it was non-voluntary strictly speaking. This is often characterized as socializing risk, which is essentially what it does.

Building the trans-continental railroad in the United States was very much a crony capitalist project, but was intended to fulfill a strategic interest of the United States: nixing the need to use shipping to navigate around the tip of South America to get to San Francisco; and, not because the US was opposed to merchant marines, but it would take months to get troops to California instead of weeks or less with a railroad. The railroads fulfilled a geopolitical ambition, just as losers like Global Crossing did in the 1990s.

Cities like Nairobi, Kenya exist entirely because the British built a railway.

Where "corporatist" is used today, it really has a lot to do with a government-business nexus, where business depends on government for revenue and politicians depend upon businesses for campaign contributions. That's why groups like the Tea Party and MoveOn scare the crap out of Washington--they aren't beholden to corporate interests or party apparatus and are therefore considered loose cannons.

There's also a lot that gets done for "security" in the post-9/11 American market that is just positively ridiculous. Airport body scanners are just an embodiment of the government playing on public fear so they can hire more unionized workers who contribute (compulsory) to their political campaigns and they can spend money on useless technology. One example is this notion of a "detention pod" when leaving an airport. The sale is that it is to keep us "safe," but in reality it is just an absolutely ludicrous procedure to sell one-way turnstiles at a ridiculously over inflated price, sell some IT hardware and hire another otherwise unemployable moron to sit there and look at you while you are in the "detention pod" (and not reflect on the sheer absurdity of his/her own life).

Regrettably, the US population for the most part consists of mindlessly stupid people who are incapable of realizing that their fears are just being exploited to line the pockets of party bosses, who are no longer really all that interested in strategy as were the 19th and early 20th Century leaders in the West. That's why we can't build a reasonable number of fighter planes at a reasonable cost anymore. That's why it takes 20 years to replace half a bridge span the whole of which only took 4 years to build, and we have to use materials from foreign suppliers. So America will basically collapse into a mire of absurdity. We are already seeing that now.

A better word for corporate hegemony is desirable.

It's not really corporate hegemony though. Take the airport security model. It consists of something like this:

1. Define some public objective (it doesn't have to be legitimate, so long as people are dumb enough to believe it).
2. Ensure that achieving the public objective requires expenditure of public resources on:
2a. Technology
2b. Unionized employees
3. Elect politicians who drum up point one, appropriate funds as per point 2, and collect union campaign donations to further the current point.

That's the nature of the system. There's a much simpler term for it: corruption.

[Rei Murasame]

Obviously capitalism inherently requires the existence of the state. Capitalism's first action was state aggression against agricultural groups.

Everything else simply flowed from there to now.

[Pants-of-dog]

Since no non-governmental mechanism exists for enforcing contract law and property rights, I would agree that capitalism is inherently statist.

[anticlimacus]

Capitalism and the modern state are mutual products. Capitalism has required the state, to make markets, keep the laws of private property, and keep the poor and workers in check--as well as bail out capitalists. Even the traditional liberal proponents of capitalism always assumed there would be some kind of state presence. It is only this odd branch of anc-caps which have developed over the last fifty or so years that have desired a stateless capitalism, which is a contradiction.

[Rich]

Not in Tolkien's Shire! The Shire of Middle Earth demonstrates how its perfectly possible to have the rule of law and respect(ish) for property rights with out any bureaucracy monopolising of the rule of force.

Of course government corrupts everything, so in effect historians are paid by the government to cast doubt on the credibility of Tolkien's historical accuracy.

[anticlimacus]

I'm also not sure that Tolkien's shire had any wage labor...

[Technology]

Everything's inherently statist about prolonged human interactions in groups anywhere larger than dozens of people. You can only asymptote to the ideal of anarchy, not actually reach it. If by "capitalism" you were to merely mean markets, then it is definitely possible to get closer to anarchy while retaining markets than we are currently. It's possible a lot of existing property would have to be usurped maybe.

Also, as far as I'm aware Kevin Carson is some sort of neo-mutualist, so he supports free markets even if he's against wage labor. Capitalism has components that make it capitalism, after all. It's not a unitary concept.

[Voluntarism]

Since no non-governmental mechanism exists for enforcing contract law and property rights, I would agree that capitalism is inherently statist.

No it's not. Capitalism is completely separate to the state. Non-state mechanisms already exist w.r.t. every part of trade and the four major aspects of law enforcement - prevention, pursuit, prosecution and punishment.

An historical example of voluntary community based (i.e. non-state) dispute resolution organisations are the ancient Irish Túath's. Individuals could join and leave competing Túath's (albeit presumably not a simple decision to break your oaths and leave but there are records of such happening often enough). In terms of the punishment and enforcement of decisions for example, private individuals undertook surety which covered most or all aspects of what we call civil and criminal law. The Brehon's (or judges) were private persons who had no connection with individual Tuatha and were hired across multiple Tuatha. As you'd expect they formed different schools of jurisprudence and competed internally for the limited market based on their reputations, integrity and knowledge. The military leaders of the Tuatha were kings but they were by no means like other monarchs as they had limited powers. They could not write laws and could be taken to court in disputes and were required to use independent judicial arbiters.

[anticlimacus]

Capitalism is completely separate to the state

Capitalism, as a socio-economic system, has been coeval with the modern state. It developed out of it, and the modern state became what it is because of it. This notion that we can analyze it as completely distinct from that is simply empirically false. Now, if we want to engage in abstract academic theory, perhaps. But this will have no baring on history. Maybe for some scholarly seminar amongst uncaps…but, it will have nothing to do with history.

[Voluntarism]

Capitalism, as a socio-economic system, has been coeval with the modern state. It developed out of it, and the modern state became what it is because of it. This notion that we can analyze it as completely distinct from that is simply empirically false. Now, if we want to engage in abstract academic theory, perhaps. But this will have no baring on history. Maybe for some scholarly seminar amongst uncaps…but, it will have nothing to do with history.

What does history have to do with the notion of capitalism? Others have already said we don't have capitalism, we have crony capitalism. Crony capitalism necessarily involves the state, capitalism can exist independently.

[emmitt]

Also, as far as I'm aware Kevin Carson is some sort of neo-mutualist, so he supports free markets even if he's against wage labor.

Yeah, he sure is. He's also argued in the past that anarcho-capitalists tend to use a completely different definition of capitalism for the most part. They basically use a stipulative definition of capitalism which makes talking to them a bit complicated.

And of course, there's Brad Spangler who once said:

It is my contention that Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism is misnamed because it is actually a variety of socialism, in that it offers an alternative understanding of existing capitalism (or any other variety of statism) as systematic theft from the lower classes and envisions a more just society without that oppression.

[JohnRawls]

The existance of the state is crucial to capitalism. Without it, capitalism in itself can not exist because there is nobody to inforce property right, contract law and other vital laws in our society. Libertarians will argue that its possible through either private companies or local communes but that argument has a very large flaw in it. Since private companies can get payed or overwhelmed with resources while local communes are nothing else BUT a state on a smaller scale with inferior organization, which is also prone to getting overwhelmed by large groups and large ammount of resources.

The state exists because its a more practical and efficient solution to uphold those laws and obligations of society, simply put.

[DeadPresidents]

Any advanced economy or civilization is gonna have a state to regulate society.

[Technology]

Use and occupancy and "finder's keepers" is by now well drilled into humanity, but the extended, complicated "sticky" private property that ancaps like could only exist on the basis of the strictest good social relations in a supposed anarchist society.

People (as is evident from history) want to have excludability and ownership over means of production. What they don't want is for the ownership rights of others to take precedent over their means of survival and reduce them to a dependance on another who has full rights to abuse. This means that the more extended and title based the kind of property in question*, the more class conflict it generates, and the more the state must socialize its defense. The title of property in actually existing capitalism is the one thing the lassez faire people want to be socialist. They seem to have not realized this, of course.

If society ever became anarcho-capitalist (lol), you're likely to end up with situations as existed in the 19th Century. Only this time, there will be no socialized state guard to bail them out when the Pinkertons meet their match in militant armed labor.


*Ancaps seem to have realized this with regard to IP rights, but not understood how this also applies to absentee property title. If they ever did, they'd become what I will now dub "Anarcho-Coopitalists" instead.

[Rich]

In the same way that Zioinsts have taken Nazi terminoligcal drivel and used it for their own ends, Libertarians have taken Marxist terminolgical drivel and used it for their own ends. The whole notion of Capitalism is a fiction. Marxists invented the notion of a Capatalist mode of production and a Capitalist class. An imagary mode of production, with imaginary classes. They then proceeded to project imaginary class struggles on to historical conflicts.

Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets and wage labor.

What was the first thing that Texans did when they got their independence? They reintroduced slavery.

The whole thing is nonsense. Its like who' side are you on: Satan or the risen Christ? Are you a Christian or a Satanist? I'm neither these are imaginary entities.

[blackjack21]

Ah. I misunderstood the question. The definitions offered by Rei, Pants-of-dog and anticlimus are quite cogent. I don't completely disagree, but would argue that the state precedes capitalism. Capitalism could be construed as an ideology, and therefore capitalism would then be a minimalist form of statism as far as interference in markets. In that sense, I would refer back to the notion of 'static' in physics--when a system is in static equilibrium, it should be either at rest or at a constant velocity. I prefer the latter definition, but I think the notion of a nation state evolved to service the former.

Capitalism's first action was state aggression against agricultural groups.

Why do you say this? The state's first action was to preserve the private property of agricultural groups. In fact, it was agricultural groups that ultimately founded states to service their needs. Primitive states are inherently feudal, and the state simply balances interests and buys off or suppresses feuds internally, and defends the interests of the internal property holders from external threats. That wasn't a modern establishment of the notion of private property, since it was enforcing personal interest in land. However, the state (King) ultimately prevents a stronger martial force from prevailing over a weaker martial force within the domain for the benefit of the greater good (production and distribution of food and other goods) and to maintain his/her own crown by preventing a weaker force than the King from aggregating too much power (notice this tendency in Christianity? It's rational self-interest). The martial ambitions of the King requires that he be able to service an army that can travel. As Napolean once said, an army marches on its stomach. So the King has to focus his rivals on conquering external threats while maintaining domestic tranquility.

The moment a territory controlled by a state suffers from production inequalities within it, the fastest and cheapest way to remedy that within the domain involves markets and trade. That coincides with a state need to defend the frontier. So the state builds military towns, roads and communication networks, and market forces push for markets. That doesn't solve income inequalities, but it does allow for a rebalance in distribution due to comparative advantage. As for modern capitalism, the notion of market towns really didn't evolve until the Middle Ages--i.e., towns that served a market purpose primarily. The interesting thing about market towns is that most of them survive to this day. By contrast, there are a lot of Roman military towns that went bust--Ephesus is an example. See Canteen for background on military markets.

Towns in Western Europe were really established by princely franchises to service markets. In fact, a good part of the Western legal system, such as division of powers between legislature, judiciary and executive--come from this system, as the prince needed to protect his absolute power and prevent rivals from gaining too much political power within the towns. Additionally, defending the towns was an expense that the state didn't want to bear. So the right to keep and bear arms was actually imposed as a duty--merchants were required to be armed and defend the market town.

I would strongly suggest reading Law and Revolution. You can get some of it free as a PDF from Harvard University School of Law. Here's a section on the Law Merchant. It's not light weight, but will give you a much deeper understanding of Western institutions that gets glossed over in a civics course, and without the costs in time and money associated with attending law school which often trivializes the history of law anyway. Law and Revolution also talks a great deal about the influence of Christianity upon law. For someone like you, meaning someone who seeks a post-democratic fascist style state, I think it's important to get a deeper grasp on why the things you dislike were created, evolved, and have persisted.

Capitalism and the modern state are mutual products.

Yes, but the state precedes capitalism.

Capitalism has required the state, to make markets, keep the laws of private property, and keep the poor and workers in check--as well as bail out capitalists.

Markets, private property, poor people and workers all existed prior to capitalism.

You can only asymptote to the ideal of anarchy, not actually reach it. If by "capitalism" you were to merely mean markets, then it is definitely possible to get closer to anarchy while retaining markets than we are currently.

Anarchy isn't really an ideal in itself. It's a temper tantrum against the ruling class. Humans are social animals, so government comes naturally. Proponents of free markets want the most efficient market possible, but even they will argue for things which impede a free market.

[Technology]

Humans are social animals, so government comes naturally.

I would argue it is, on a certain level of scale, the opposite. Humans are social animals for the scale level of small groups and tribes, and this social familial nature fosters cooperation without the need for complex bureaucracy or constant formal coercion. Stepping up to the scale of modern human society is actually going far beyond the bounds of our ancestral evolutionary environment, because you are expecting people who are completely unrelated who would be fighting for a different familial genetic group in the past to cooperate. People tend to care less about distant people they aren't related to, and the state is the mechanism used to force them to give up resources so that a society much larger than our ancestral ones can function.

Humans are social, but only on a small scale. Government is actually a cultural phenomena that tries to administer groups that aren't living together or who aren't related. Government is needed because we are not social enough. If we were so social, there would never be so much conflict of interest.

A good example of species which are far more social than humans, are all the species of ants and termites. The queen in these societies never has to deal out infractions through enforcers or police based on a law system, because her brood is genetically devoted to her survival and each individual ant will follow all chemical signals and give itself up for the hive's genetic legacy without needing to be coerced into it.

[Rich]

Capitalism could be construed as an ideology,

Maybe it could, but whats the point in arguing about the nature of the supposed entity behind a label when there is absolutely no agreement as to what that label refers. Most people don't even seem to be clear what the term means in their own minds. So before we go any further with this debate

What is Capitalism? What isn't Capitalism? When did it start? Did it ever end? If so when?

An historical example of voluntary community based (i.e. non-state) dispute resolution organisations are the ancient Irish Túath's.

And what exactly has this to do with the price of bacon? Are the Tuath's now the defining form of Capitalism.