How does it work? Why would people work for no reason but to sustain another person?

...

We invest as much as possible in reducing work via automation.
People choose to do work if they want something, by means of democratic associations. Take, for example, Portland Anarchist Road Care- the government isn't fixing the roads, so the people have taken it upon themselves to fix potholes and the like. Why should you expect a government or corporation or friendly altruist or anyone else to do something for you? If you need something, get together some likeminded people, gather relevant info and tools, and do it. That's the basis of ancom economics, from which the rest ultimately springs.
As for planning the economy, we had a very productive discussion on how to do that with computers: archive.fo/SDBcR

t. idpol-breathing capitalism liberal
Take off that black flag, you're no anarchist

Nope. At the least, workers' cooperatives function under capitalism and are an alternative to wage labor.

Are you talking about capitalism?

holy smokes this is the most insipid thing i have read all week

But what of luxuries? Are they deemed unnecessary and not produced? Shit like game consols, computers, leftypol etc

kek

Thank you user, i'll read all that later when I have a bit more time. Much appreciated.

In communism, a person would work to benefit himself. The more an individual produces, the more he is entitled to in return. That stands in opposition to capitalism in which a person's labor is only beneficial to someone else, his boss.

no, you're literally talking about capitalism, a system where you sell off your labor for less than it is worth

Another question I have is semi-related.

What is plain Anarchist economy like?
I'm guessing its neither Cap or Soc, and I'm confused on the lot.

We're not actually intellectually motivated by financial incentives. Your entire worldview is a meme
youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Luxuries are likewise produced and socialized. They would not be given priority over necessities, but there is no reason not to produce them.

Could you imagine game consoles and computers that were produced without the profit motive? No proprietary anything, no planned obselescence, no lowjacking, no DRM, no intellectual property…

Workers own the means of production and companies are run by them. Most unions exist to achieve as oppose to compete, and by using the money they're given to make products they use it to help the community and their workplace.

if you read Peter Kropotkins "The Conquest of Bread" Well known to be the most comprehensive description of Anarchist Communism, he has a whole section on why luxuries are to be catered for.

Specifically, the only reason most people cannot have luxuries is because all of the labour power of the proletariat is wasted making terrible products in order to sell to make capitalists money, rather than using that labour power to make things the proletariat want and need.

Think about it, if you were part of a democratic collective, would you vote for the group to provide its members with luxury items? I would. And when you have got rid of all the wastage of capitalism, these are things you can easily afford. Most people don't ask for much, even in terms luxuries. They want a nice house, three meals, education for their kids, a job to go to, some vacations, the chance to be creative, a couple of drinks at the weekend etc. This is the life we could provide everyone if we did not squander our resources pandering to the needs of elite business interests.

That varies wildly. The communists envision a gift economy. The mutualists imagine a market system. The syndicalists want a decentralized system run by democratic unions.

also just in general it is wrong to think people wouldn't work purely in community spirit given the chance, before capitalism we did this for thousands of years.

And none of them are able to give straight answers about how their shit is actually supposed to work.

Face it, post-capitalism is a silly fantasy until us leftists get our heads out of our fucking asses and do the hard work of figuring out how a post-capitalist economy is actually supposed to operate.

We've got libraries full of intellectual circlejerking over how bad capitalism is and how good a vaguely-defined contentless alternative will be.

you just need to take the "red pill," man. you know, the political philosophy that compares itself to a fictional world created by transgender sisters.

You do realize this literally describes Capitalism right?

Yes, I've ordered the book a few days ago when I first started wondering what anarchy is.

will read

There was nothing wrong with the Catalonia economic model. They increased agriculture yields, some sources say by as much as 50%.

Nobody knows how post-capitalism will be.

That would be completely utopian.

It's tempting to simplify capitalism to that, but it is more complicated.

The main difference between any sort of market system (which, I believe in line with Marxists, will lead to capitalism's rebirth in the modern world) and a communistic system (stateless, classless, "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, whatever they may be) is that, under capitalism, what is produced has no value to a seller - it is produced for exchange value, which in turn must be reinvested in capital and further production without end if one wants to remain in the rat race. Under communism, everything is produced directly for someone's benefit - it is production for use. The economy is planned, as much as possible by face-to-face democracy, to meet human needs first and foremost. It is the contradiction between exchange value and use value which creates both capitalism's continual growth ad productivity (as needs are never truly satisfied) and the seeds of its demise (as its push to convert workers into machines creating goods which they will never use goes against human nature). These are Marx's economics in a nutshell - that being said, they're not important to anarcho-communism in terms of the specific outcomes of the contradictions of capitalism because our ideas stem from an analysis of how almost all historical societies started out functioning on the basis of people helping each other because they needed stuff done and reciprocating without the expectation of an immediate return. Help someone fix their roof, get help repairing your car. There were even some societies which advanced beyond the primitive stage - the Iroquois Confederacy, Cossack stanitsas. Most notably, this is visible today - wherever revolt has occurred among workers, as if by instinct, there have arisen council-democratic assemblies, at the time best exemplified by the experience of the Paris Commune revolt in 1871. If people defeat capitalism, the state, the church, and all other institutions of ruling over men, and defend the new society against hunger and conquering, anarchist communism, if not under that name, will develop.

My words taste like oatmeal?

There really isn't a "plain anarchism" other than that they're all a variety of socialism. There is no such thing as anarcho-capitalism. The word "anarchist" was first used by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his book "What Is Property?", in which he defined himself as being against capitalism (a term also coined in that book), concluding that "property is theft!". He, however, believed in a free market where the workers owned their firms because there would no longer be a state to protect the "property rights" of the capitalist at gunpoint. His economic system was known as "mutualism". After Marx's critique of markets and seeing how capitalists and the state brutally put down any attempt at reforming the system, however, most anarchists took a further left stance. The first of these was Mikhail Bakunin's anarcho-collectivism, which grew out of mutualist anarchism. It proposed a system of labor notes as a replacement for money, within the framework of fully-democratized labor unions managing the economy and government being constituted of council-democratic assemblies (what would later be known as "soviets"). Finally, it grew its own materialist analysis of society to rival Marxism with the anarcho-communism coined by Peter Kropotkin in "The Conquest Of Bread". This was merged with anarcho-collectivism's structures and ideas on how to get to anarchism (revolutionary industrial unions) to create anarcho-syndicalism, which has since then more or less dominated anarchist ideas.

Anarcho-syndicalism is a variety of anarcho-communism. It takes the praxis of anarcho-collectivism and marries it to the economics and analysis of anarcho-communism.

You should start with Proudhon tbh.
Kropotkin is for children anyways.

My personal favourite by him is Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, it is a well sourced and researched geological study that argues the most potent factor in the evolution of species is there ability to help each other to complete tasks.

Another favourite of mine is Debt:The First 5000 Years. It doesn't actually talk much about Anarchy, but its written by an Anarchist who believes in gift economies. Its a history money, he argues that money was originally debt and then shows how that has developed into the economic system we have now over 5000 years.

It is extremely informative on a number of subjects aside from that and is extremely well argued IMO and also written in a casual tone that is easy to read.

Another key read is PJ Proudhon's What is Property? In which he argues against the notion of private property as a right. I would say it is probably the most essential but the least accessible of all the books

Right up until you need to decide how best to use resources on anything more than direct consumption. Seriously, if your position doesn't have a coherent response to fucking von Mises of all people, you really haven't thought things through.

No, nobody's bothered to figure out how it'll work, because they took Marx's very specific admonition against utopianism to a completely retarded extreme (see ).

When the fuck do you expect the working class to figure out how to create a globally-integrated system of production for need that enables general abundance? Do you expect that people will just magically figure it out in the middle of a civil war? How do you account for the fact that people haven't done anything like that, despite many rebellions over the past 200 years?

If you could choose, would you live in Cuba or in Switzerland?

i dont know why this meme is pushed so hard. Its not difficult to imagine democratically controlled production. It has already happened at several points in history successfully

tl;dr anarchist communism is something that sort of "happens" when you take away rulers over men because it's in our genes to do so. We're evolutionarily hardwired for it.

If someone asks for you to pass the salt, do you do a cost-benefit analysis of the effort versus the reward and then do it? No, you pass the salt, you autist. If you're trying to get into a bus, do you rush to get in as fast as you can? No, you spontaneously organize with other people into a line because it makes sense and helps everyone. Anarcho-communism, people.

They're both excellent and informative reads, even if I disagree with Proudhon on a number of points.

Is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha question?

The centre point of my ideology is that wealth is concentrated unevenly, mostly around the heart of the empire, Switzerland being such a place.

Of course it is better to live at the heart of the empire, on top of the stolen hoard.

I want to take the hoard and give it to the people who deserve it.

Castro did a 6.5/10 job on that front in his own country in my opinion

what part of increased yields isn't a response to Von Mises? The more food you have, the better equipped your population is to create beyond direct consumption.

But capitalism was the driving force behind such things as electricity, locomotion, industrialization, etc. It was only through harnessing energy that the need of physical labor was reduced enough that slavery was no longer the status quo in the world.

What is this, an effortpost for ants?

The part where you have to decide how to allocate resources for second/third/nth-order production. In fact, the ability for planned/co-operative production to effectively meet direct consumption needs isn't even opposed by von Mises, he directs all of his fire on the problem of allocating resources for producing the MoP.

And if food + labour were the only two ingredients that human civilisation ran on, I'd be inclined to agree with you. Back in the real world our supply/production/distribution chains are much more complex, and you haven't even tried to tell me the first thing about how these will be co-ordinated in a post-capitalist society.

And before you give me some weak-ass vague bullshit like 'a community of freely-associated producers', attempt to define how your vagueness will actually operate for more than direct consumption.

That sad moment when you realize that capitalism is indeed the end of history.

Fuck off idiot. I'm not hanging shit on these anarkiddies because I think capitalism is the last true workable system - we'd be up shit fucking creek if it was.

I'm trying to convince people to suspend their political posturing while they go out and actually figure out a way to make their various utopiae operate in the real fucking world. I say utopiae because all talk of post-capitalism is inherently utopian - it doesn't become less so just because you only talk about it in terms of how it negates capitalism.

There's one poster on this board who posts with the sabokitty flag who has the right idea, I've seen him around the cybernetics thread (linked in ). I don't think destroying capitalism is some impossible task, I just think that you're never going to do it if you sit around building your stupid little communes without ever putting any thought into how people are actually supposed to co-ordinate production without prices, markets, property, or money [or whichever combination of the previous that you think is responsible for the world's ills].

obvious caveat here: i'm not speaking for everyone on this board

however, i would argue that our current economic structure depends on continuous growth. continuous growth is fucking awesome when you mainline a shit ton of energy into the system. most economic "models" are largely irrelevant–what matters is how much energy you insert into industrial production.

over the past couple centuries we have exploited every energy-intensive resource we could access on earth. any damn economic model looks good when you shove a shit ton of energy down its throat.

the failures of capitalism begin to reveal themselves when the energy infusion begins to slow down–and this is the state we've been in for a few decades now. the most "productive" capitalist structures have shifted from tangible developments–general infrastructure such as power lines, roads, buildings, along with private improvements like furniture, microwaves, television, etc.–to meaningless GDP growth expressing itself through financialization of our economy combined with an arbitrary increase in the value of property. we've had some advances, certainly, in our lives recently–the internet and mobile phones specifically spring to mind. however, the BASIC STRUCTURE of our world has remained unchanged for decades.

there's a very good reason for this, and the reason is a slowdown in energy production. our energy yields on oil fields, specifically, has dropped tremendously as readily available oil has disappeared.

so the illusion of capitalist superiority has begun to wither as natural limits to resource exploitation reveals itself. "capitalism" hasn't been the driving force behind shit. innovations in energy exploitation have driven advancements in our modern society, and there's no reason to believe that an alternative economic model would have been unable to maximize the utility of fossil fuels in the same manner.

the only thing i'm sure of is that capitalism siphons value from general society and redistributes it from the people have happen to be lucky enough to own the capital. if we want to transition to an equitable world, we need to abolish private property rights and instead entrust the benefits of energy production to the people who are physically responsible for harnessing that energy

"from" should be "to," obviously. my bad.

How is the society you're describing not just capitalism with power plant technicians instead of men in suits?

I mean think it through for a minute: any system where a subset of the population decides how society's productive surplus will be distributed will inevitably reproduce the problems of a class society. Once you put people in control of resources like that, their main goal becomes maintaining that position.

This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that leftists simply haven't tried to realistically consider what would be necessary for a post-capitalist society to operate.

Do I have to give the fruit of my labor out to leeches in this system? If I don't, what will happen?

A post-capitalist society will not necessarily be a classless society. Also fully abolishing authority is a fantasy.

It was a response to .

Until you manage to root out greed and fear from the human heart, socialism will always be a utopian dream.

i guess the main argument from MY perspective–not necessarily a leftist perspective–is that we should do a better job of compensating people who are ACTUALLY RESPONSIBLE for creating value in society. the people who arbitrarily "own" an oil field don't mean shit to me. the people who can figure out how to harvest oil for useful production mean a great deal.

so basically, two things: first, i'm opposed to passive capital gains garnered from interest and "ownership" rights. second, i think it is in the best interest of humanity to oppose the use of liquid power (i.e., money) to distort the interests of human civilization. in other words, just because you have liquid power, that shouldn't mean shit. you are actively degrading the interest of humanity if you abuse your liquid power to maintain your status–and this is especially true if you inherit liquid power

Greed is a shit argument, literally baby tier. There is no such thing as a human nature independent of context.

Yeah ok that's great and all but who would build the roads?

Yes, you do! It's terrible! They will work you like a dog and only give you a fraction of the fruit of your labour, enough to keep you alive to do it all over again the next day!
They'll starve you, humiliate you, make it seem like it's your own fault for not complying! In some circumstances, they'll throw you in jail!

By 'this system' you're talking about capitalism, right?

Ok cool, well, we've established that you either haven't read Marx or are totally at odds with everything you did read. Fuck it though, since nobody actually ever bothers to give even the slightest hint of specificity about what 'post-capitalism' would actually be like, you might be right. Of course, you offer just as much evidence as the people who say the exact opposite, so…

See what happens, you silly fucking leftists? See what happens when you don't elucidate an actual alternative to capitalism? Vagueposting dumbass evidence free motherfuckers like this one feel like their own intellectual midgetry matches that of the board, and feel welcome to post.

Well sure, and I agree with all that you've posted. My question is and always has been this: What the fuck are you going to do about it? What are the concrete aspects of the alternative system that you think will overcome the problems you describe? Why would anyone get behind it, leaving aside silly moralistic notions like 'the best interests of humanity'.

These are the sorts of nitty-gritty questions Marx answered about capitalism as a system. Unfortunately none of the thinkers that followed him put half as much effort into coherently constructing an alternative. Therefore, the task is up to us.

Ha, yes! Practical issues - that's the kind of shit that these intellectual types never seem to bother thinking about.

Automated robots, maybe?

well, shit. i'll see what i can do.

i will condition this post on the fact that i don't believe in free will. i think that humans possess an illusion of autonomy, but that every action we take is controlled by natural physical processes that are either (1) pre-ordained or (2) entirely random. either scenario elicits the same reality–we ultimately aren't in control. with that out of the way, let's jerk.

what are we gonna do about it? how do we overcome the problems of hierarchy and oppression? i think we start with a de-centralized system. the idea of a planned economy will fail from the start, because "planned" implies a centralization of power, and a centralization of power implies a perversion of individual rights. a "planned economy" runs into the same problems as what we experience in our modern capitalist system–that is, a concentration of power will inevitably lead to an inequitable and inferior world.

so we need a system that will ensure the interests of humanity at large. the only way i see of accomplishing this is via direct democracy, i.e., the PEOPLE of the community decide FOR THEMSELVES what the best path is. direct democracy WILL break down once you reach a critical mass of people–it simply won't be possible to give everyone the consideration they deserve. so an ideal world will necessarily exist in small communities.

basically, i am arguing for society based on murray bookchin's philosophy. this is a cop out, but for the remainder of my argument, i defer to bookchin

This is what I've always liked about you bookchin-posters - you at least try. Unfortunately I apparently haven't been very clear. I thought I had been asking people to start thinking in practical, economic terms, not vague, unactionable political/philosophical ones.

Let me ask some questions that will hopefully clarify the kind of thing I'm asking people to start seriously thinking about (I know you've said to defer to Bookchin, I'm more talking to the broader audience [such as it is] here).

How do you co-ordinate the circulation of goods between the small communities you propose?

How do separate communities decide on issues of collective relevance [CO2 emissions are a good example here]?

How do you account for wildly varying underlying resource wealth between communities [eg, do you intend to systematically prevent a community with mines and rich volcanic soil from totally eclipsing a desert community in terms of material wealth?]?

Is this kind of society capable of defending itself from the remnants of the old system [especially considering that all war in the modern era is decided almost exclusively on industrial capacity]?

Who builds the roads between the communities? Whose asphalt do they use?

How are large-scale projects handled/co-ordinated? Will a Bookchinist society be one without a CERN or a space program?

How is your direct democracy implemented? Does everyone get together and debate every single issue of community policy? Does any task get delegated? If so, how?

I could go on and on and on and on, but I think you get my point. I'm absolutely sick of empty posturing about some vague, never-defined alternative. I'm glad you gave it a red-hot go.

Then read a fucking book. The Conquest of Bread explains Anarcho-Communism and What is Property? explains mutualism.

Cuba is a dictatorship, and I'm not a tankie. It's also poor as shit thanks to US sanctions. I'll take Switzerland thanks, I prefer chocolate to fat cancer sticks anyway.

sorry for the delay in my response.

it sounds like you've taken a largely defeatist view of the world, consistent with the caveat i started my post with: due to the inextricable imposition of incontrovertible human imperatives, we can't practically escape the capitalist destructivism wrought upon society writ large.

to make sense of this system, we must incorporate the basic logistics of human behavior. consider two societies. one assumes a perfectly equitable existence. it is in balance with human interests. it is in balance with ecological interests. in a vacuum, it lives in harmony with nature, forever (or at least until this world inevitably ends).

the other ravenously exploits everything it can as fast is it can. it cares nothing for equitability. it overshoots its natural limits quickly, because it cared about nothing but short-term, personal gain. whoever can get his, gets his. what a utopia!

but the latter, ravenous society quickly runs out of resources to support its mindless destruction of every that supports itself. the only remaining option? invade the sustainable society!

so yes, a bookchin society is pure fantasy. it presumes that people would be willing to live within their own means. it presumes that people–ALL people–will realize that modern luxuries dependent on thoughtless exploitation of earth's energy are inherently unsustainable.

stated another way, we can't currently change the status quo because such a large proportion of humanity is dependent on the fairytale of endless energy exploitation.

so i've adopted a bookchin perspective that incorporates eco-socialism. a critique of capitalism can't stop at the exploitation of human labor. it must continue to the problems that are inherently present when a natural product of earth rationalizes to itself that it has escaped the constraints of the physical world that it is necessarily bound to observe.

You are already doing that.
The clothes you wear, the food you eat and the house you live in probably weren't produced all by yourself.

I mentioned above, anarchists are already doing the roadwork in Portland, OR. The more I read about human nature and history and ancom theory analyzing these two things, the more I realize that what matters is that you simply have a structure of some kind for doing a task. If it needs to be done, then people will join and offer their expertise and assistance.

If people really were naturally lazy and sat around all day doing nothing when given the chance, then how did we develop modern society? People compulsively have to do stuff, both to sustain themselves and because they want to do meaningful work.

Thanks for the replies, have ordered some Proudhon and Kropotkin shit from ebay already.

Any examples of a military? What if, assuming a global anarchist society isn't achieved yet, the neighbouring tankie nation decides to take over the little communes?

I like the idea of ancom, but every ancom I have ever met has been a fucking sjw cunt

Nestor Makhno led an anarchist military in the Ukraine

Bolsheviks are still sore

So because of your personal anedoctal experience with some SJWs you have to consider the whole Ancom thing not worth your attention?

Remember: Idpol is an enemy of the worker

Why don't you just read it online for free?

marxists.org/archive/index.htm#anarchism

Look into the history of Revolutionary Catalonia and the Free Territory in Ukraine.

Also Rojava in Kurdistan right now is not Ancom but communalist. Communalism draws heavily on anarchist organisation but isn't so focused on dissolving the state immediately, rather transforming it into democratic a workers state

Murray Bookchin is the main thinker behind this theory