Its strikes me that these people don't know what capitalism is. I think they think that corporatism is capitalism.
In any case, you can't have an anarchist society ... its always going to turn into an anarcho-capitalist society. People are always going to join together into mutually beneficial joint-enterprises ... and they are going to want to share in the proceeds from such enterprises ... and that is what capitalism basically enables.
>Its strikes me that these people don't know what capitalism is
In my experience Anarchists are some of the most well read community of political activists around. May I suggest that you don't know what capitalism is and should spend some time actually reading some theory? Or perhaps engage in conversation with some anarchists? I think you'd find their views and philosophy much deeper and valid than you've conceded in your post.
When you hold up small regions that survived for a short time (about 3 years), created nothing, then were defeated, I’m not sure you’re going to win against a system that created modern North America from nothing and has lasted over 200 years.
Anarchism is an abstract idea that has never worked, which is why all your examples are of anarchists that work with collectivist, squarely against their individualist ideals.
>What do you need to make a modern enterprise? You need tools and you need labor. Some people provide labor, and others provide the tools. Some people who can provide tools, don't necessarily want to provide labor. They are shareholders without being workers.
But the thing is, this only needs to exist this way in a capitalist society. In all your points, you seem to not grasp that the underlying economic system of an anarchist society would in no way resemble the current state of affairs.
In much the same way the economy under a feudalist society does not resemble a capitalist society, and yet fields were tilled and walls built without shareholders.
The fact is that if you abolish capital (by returning collective control over the means of production to the workers) there is no section of society, no "other that provides the tools". The people who provide the tools are other workers, working in other fields, and they supply the workers in the field which uses the tools with the tools. There is no unproductive segment of society such as there is today which lays claim to the wealth without doing any of the labour. This means that there cannot be the accumulation of wealth that we see today, as instead of being horded and spent on the whims of a few, it is immediately pumped back into society.
The state and capitalism are symbiotic. The state only exists to keep capitalist enterprise in check, that is why the state perform functions that we do not believe should be performed for profit (why so many countries have welfare systems, healthcare systems and militaries to maintain the states primacy).
Otherwise everything would be performed by private enterprise (i.e. your anarcho-capitalist ideal) which would very quickly lead to corporate feudalism and private armies.
There is no way for the state to not exist and capitalism to exist at the same time, and seeing as both structures are the root cause of many issues in society, the abolition of both is necessary through decentralization and worker led confederations of labor, rather than the current system of capitalist led governments and businesses.
The state exists in it's current form because we don't trust private enterprise to perform those functions, otherwise we would. So you're agreeing with me, although I could have phrased it better.
And we don't trust private enterprise for good reasons. They're known under many names - tragedy of commons, coordination problems, collective action problems. One possible solution for all those, towards which all societies in history gravitated so far, is the state.
You have such a simplistic understanding of economics for somebody who asks others to read and study.
Where do tools come from? Are they descending from heaven like magic? Tools are the product of someone’s labor. Why would mr A who built tool X give it to mr B for his enterprise unless he gets some return?
Or do you imagine a world in which there is no shortage of tools? In that case just imagine a world where there is no shortage of anything and we can dispense with human labor altogether.
Anarchism is very possible when robots do everything. But not short of that.
Also, you should study why the anarchists ultimately lost and were butchered by the communists after the tsar’s regime was toppled in Russia.
You already answered your own question as to why having this argument with an 'anarchist' is a waste of time. By redefining capitalism to be a specific case of oligarchic kleptocracy (the very non free market system of corporate welfare we currently have in america) they can always avoid the interesting points of the argument.
As an aside, as I read this, you are not advocating for anarcho-capitalism, just pointing out where this scenario ends, but I don't think the people arguing you below understand that.
The real winner is the person who understands both sides and can pick out which people aren't capable of having an intellectually honest conversation and avoiding them.
What is a shareholder? Have you ever thought about it?
What do you need to make a modern enterprise? You need tools and you need labor. Some people provide labor, and others provide the tools. Some people who can provide tools, don't necessarily want to provide labor. They are shareholders without being workers.
If all the workers bring their own tools, then the enterprise can be 100% worker owned. If some workers need someone else to provide tools, they need some outside capital. That outside capital is basically outside people providing tools in exchange for some ownership in the enterprise.
As enterprises become more complex, you may need more and more complicated and expensive tools ... and the people who provide the labor and the people who provide the tools can become highly specialized.
You have precisely identified half the problem that anarcho-syndicalists (the Chomsky type) see with our economic system: that some people want to provide capital to an enterprise in exchange for ownership. The other half of the problem is that as markets work (relative scarcity of capital vs labor) the people who provide the capital end up collecting most of the profits of the enterprise. Which has resulted in the enormous wealth inequalities of our times.
The anarcho-syndicalist solution is simple. If an enterprise is bigger than say 30 people, by law you cannot gain ownership of it by providing capital. In fact, the shareholding system is rather simple. If there are N people who provide labor to the enterprise, then each of them get roughly 1/Nth ownership of the enterprise. Sure, people doing more technical or more difficult work might receive a bigger salary than people doing more manual labor but it will be very difficult for anyone to amass relative massive wealth.
Sure, in such a economic system, collecting capital will be hard to enterprises. "Growth" might slow down etc etc, but at least people will be fairly reimbursed for their labor.
> by law you cannot gain ownership of it by providing capital
How do you stop (say) a hundred people getting together and agreeing to do just that, without having a state? Most people prefer job security rather than part ownership (revealed preference).
I was waiting for this response. Anarcho-syndicalists are not revolutionaries. They don't want to upend the entire system in one go, only make simple changes that get them what they want. So really, anarcho-syndicalists are (temporarily) happy with a democratic system, with a state that enforces laws through standard methods (police etc). Once this particular change has been made they will go after other unreasonable hierarchy [1] besides wealth-inequality and try to come up with a solution for them.
This methodology is not very different from that of socialist democracies, who very slowly over decades have expanded the network of protections and services offered by the state, in service of their goal of a benevolent democratic state that takes care of all its citizens.
[1] Remember, anarchists (Chomsky style at least) want a society free of unreasonable hierarchies - where "unreasonable" is up for debate.
I don't think I fully understand what you mean. But I will take your comment literally and try to answer. I apologize if I misunderstood.
I think every politico-economic system stops people from doing certain things - that is an inevitable consequence if a group of people with possibly conflicting goals want to cooperate for mutual benefit. The whole debate between different ideologies is what to stop people from and why.
As I said anarcho-syndicalists are evolutionaries who want to start by making one simple change to our current democratic-capitalist systems - nerf the power of capital to further gain wealth (what). And they want to do this to reduce income inequality in society (why).
This proposal changes our current systems in just this way. Its not intending to change the fundamental framework of law, order, economy, politics; just merely changing some laws and economic subsystems of of current framework. Anarcho-syndicalists are not rosy-eyed people that believe in the fundamental goodness of people - but realists who want to improve society through standard democratic ways.
I hope I answered your question; if not I would happy if you explained a bit more.
I was trying to understand the reason for the word "anarchist" in there. What you described can be equally applied to most liberals. Indeed, Bernie Sanders would verbally agree with impoverishing countries (because that's what preventing capital from growing means), and I don't believe he has ever claimed to be an anarchist.
Anyway, I understand your position and I'm just quibbling about terminology, so I believe I'll stop here.
Again this depends, you're more describing corporate capitalism, most small businesses don't go through these processes and might become worker coops to survive if can't pay wages or if nobody good enough to take over even if its a profitable and expanding small chain.(speak from personal experience)
Its pretty oversimplized to describe the capital acquistion process, small businesses can last 20 or 30 years without any actual outside investment. Most small businesses dont become corporations that require extensive outside investment because its hard, thus your case is only certain if every small business becomes a corporation through outside investment but it doesnt occur everytime and is only an edge case.
OP is right, that's not capitalism and moreso that is far from the liberal concept of free market capitalism. I don'k know why you assumed that bringing up china or the soviet union would changr that fact, particularly in the form of an ad hominem.
> I don'k know why you assumed that bringing up china or the soviet union would changr that fact
That's a dishonest interpretation of my comment, and in fact I think you know exactly why I brought it up. OP gets to pick and choose which capitalisms are "true capitalism", but leftists are almost always denied the right to point out basic historic facts, such as maybe Stalin killed people because he was a paranoid dictator being blacklisted by all Western powers, rather than some non-sequitor about communism supernaturally compelling him to.
Not an ad hominem, just genuinely curious, does he literally think "not all capitalisms are true capitalism" then also claim "all socialisms are true socialisms" then not see any irony?
In any case, you can't have an anarchist society ... its always going to turn into an anarcho-capitalist society. People are always going to join together into mutually beneficial joint-enterprises ... and they are going to want to share in the proceeds from such enterprises ... and that is what capitalism basically enables.