New here, and even though i’ve favored anarchist philosophy for a long time, i never discussed it with anybody else. So i thought i should ask around and get an idea of what the common ideas are. Specifically regarding economy and capitalism.
Premises, i’ll try to keep it short:
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I believe we can agree that “people should be fairly/ethically rewarded for their labor” is a reasonable ideal, and that profit is a much greater barrier to that ideal than tax is. With tax, it’s less ambigious if, where and when things “trickle down”, and people get some (certainly much room for improvement) democratic (likewise) say in the matter.
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The capitalist economy obviously contradicts anarchist ideals of decentralization. Non-democratic and hardly meritocratic (chance and anti-competitive tactics) power is concentrated in the hands of a small elite, arguably more influential for our day-to-day lives than governments.
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Humans are imperfect - imperfectly aligned and imperfectly capable, - so one shouldn’t give a human (or a body of humans) more authority/responsibility than is absolutely necessary, and do all that one can do to continuously ensure and audit their alignment and capability. As a political idea you’re all very familiar with this, but i also extend it to economy.
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Capitalism does some job at allocating (“investing”) labor and resources “intelligently” (using very generous wording), indirectly, into various measures of progress. It doesn’t do the best job, very far from it, but i think any alternative one proposes should at least try to do a better job at converting labor and resources into improving everybody’s quality of life.
There are some existing alternatives to convert labor. There is for example the concept of worker cooperatives (which could optionally be non-profit), which i find interesting.
But i don’t see that by itself scale easily to national or even global level. Especially regarding the labor/resource allocation or “investment” aspect. I’ve spent a great deal trying to conceptualize an ethical, decentralized and also more effective (at converting labor and resources into quality of life) alternative to capitalism, but i don’t feel like my thoughts are worth seriously sharing yet. As a very vague summary, think non-profit worker cooperatives + WIP decentralized, local-first hierarchial method of democratic crowd funding.
I’m curious to hear what thoughts and ideas you have on the subject. Also perhaps literature recommendations (please summarize).
I think education can help us out with that. If we can manage to teach not only our own children but create environments, like schools, where we can teach critical thinking and epistemic hygiene to all people that might actually help combat some of the indoctrination our children face in high-school, college and (bleh) mainstream media. These would have to be highly localized. A big hurdle is sabotage and discrediting perpetrated by the US government. As we all know the government is well known for this kind of stuff.
The point I’m trying to make is if we can teach people to be aware of their relation to the state, it might actually bring people together to take direct action. I know it sounds too hypothetical, but it’s not crazy to believe the current US administration will steep to a new low. The rich want more money, and we know all too well what happens when the majority have nothing and the rich have it all.
It really seems like a daunting task at first, and the amount of work that has to be done may be demoralizing, but as Murray Bookchin said: “If we do not do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable.” And this becomes ever so clear when you look at what kind of shit the US and EU get away with these days.
I would say i find that very optimistic, but that is clearly also your point:
It’s both inspiring but also disillusioning. It does seem like something impossible.
Education would be a great start, but i am doubtful it would be even near sufficient. Even under the strictest conditions, beyond education also nurture, indoctrination from a young age, i believe enough people would remain fallible and/or misguided to make a system that does not rely on authority stable long-term. That’s the difficulty with ideal anarchism in general, is it not? But i’m not trying to counter hope and optimism, actually i’m trying to come up with a solution.
Our most ancient ancestors lived in, for the most part, big families. Authority didn’t go much beyond basic family authority. Matriarchs and patriarchs, smart aunts and uncles, unruly young, each contributing will to a final decision, in different ratios depending on domain.
Why were no great kingdoms founded 100 thousand years ago? Why are even the largest settlements no larger than a handful of big families?
Apologies for letting a different ideology of mine seep into this problem, but perhaps one could culturally emulate, even if at just an abstract level, those conditions that prevented the emergence of large, central authority for hundreds of thousands of years before urbanization. Not outright primitivism, not if it can be helped. It’s more of a psychological and behavioral investigation, really, and mostly just to augment different strategies.
Or perhaps the better solution is to just curb my expectations for anarchism, and accept a partial implementation for a start. Jeez, i’m already halfway towards primitivism again.