I'm a Market Anarchist, Convert Me

Well, I've got no problem with establishing some basic laws for protection of individuals and trying to get the loonies some help and away from everyone else, if that's his concern.

direct democracy would be the decision making process under libertarian communism.

now majority voting isn't perfect, but if you want the fruits of a social division of labour it's often the least-worst way of negotiating that irreducible social aspect (i don't think ideals, homogenous or otherwise have much to do with day-to-day direct democracy btw). splitting everyone off into atomised producers for the market doesn't make individuals free, it just impersonally alienates them in a battle to overcome each other (which when you need money to eat, is hardly 'non-violent' either, any more than the US bombing Vietnamese rice crops rather than Viet Cong than was non-violent). that said if someone was permanently in the minority they should be able to join a more like-minded collective or whatever.

Two quick point:

1) anarchism, libertarian communism (really one in the same) is based on the idea of building democracy at the most basic levels of society--the workplace, the community, the university--and then federating upward, ideally thru a rotating, instantly recallable delegatory system. Now I'm not a nut who believed consensus is an efficient of practicable way to make all the decisions in a society, but I do believe that when power is evenly distributed to every individual in that society, compromise is that much more easily achieved. If you know you are going to have a say in every workplace decision, you can afford to 'lose out' on one, knowing you have a much better chance of 'coming out on top' in the next decision. Plus, and this is dealing primarily in the economic realm, when the social nature of work is realized, disagreements based on class and/or workplace division will be severely diminished. This is important because society has an econocmic basis, once you transform those relations, you transform society.

2)Loonies and crime--Street crime is predominantly created by capitalism itself. It is the absolutely criminal maldistribution of wealth, power, resources, and opportunity that force people into criminal acts. And this isn't only theft, gang activity, etc. If you like at a community that is losing jobs, violent crime goes up as well--murder, rape, domestic violence, child abuse. As to the loonies, modern society is so disaffected, we have so little control of our lives that people act out in irrational ways. This manifests itself not only in the economic realm, other hierarchies breed this as well: sexual repression in the church leads to kiddie fondling, the most violent expression of a sexist society is rape, etc..

The point: institute libertarian communism and many of the social ills you are concerned about will be drastically diminished. That being said, yes ways will have to be instituted by those who blatantly put others' in harms way or are incorrigibly violent. I don't have the exact answers, but I will say rehabilitation is where society should begin.

very interesting discussion, just one point:

i have to say i don't believe this. every culture has had street crime, well before capitalism; and i've known rich kids who enjoy beating up on people. i think the prime culprit is status division, of which capitalism creates its own variety, with sheer arrogance the second cause. i know you say "predominantly", but i think the percentage is much lower.

well, ncwob said "predominantly" and i can't buy that. it's hard to know the causes in each circumstance. there are desperately poor and disenfranchised people who never commit a violent act in their lives, and hunger, e.g., would lead to theft, excuse me, to liberating food from stores, not to muggings (my idea of a "street crime").

Markets will inevitably generate great inequality of power and wealth. In other words, even if a revolution expropriated by the big companies, a market governed system would simply regenerate some form of class domination.

I'd say that class domination is based on two types of structure. First, there is ownership of means of production. This gives a structural advantage to the owners, so they can force people to work for them who lack their own means of production.

Secondly, there are differences in "human capital" or skills and capabilities and talents that people can use to gain advantages. A person with great expertise and skill at marketing or with scarce engineering ability have power in a market to force worker colletives or cooperatives to give them special privileges. In the Mongragon coops in Spain the professional/managerial elite came to dominate, and nowadays the coop bank mainly invests in capitalist ventures. If you're working 40 hours a week sweeping floors, running a machine, driving a truck, you don't have time and opportunity to learn skills/knowledge associated with marketing, engineering, financial analysis, and those with this expertise can snow people in the meetings. That's what happens in the Mondragon coops and that's what happened in the old market self-management system in Yugoslavia.

Market relationships presuppose unilteral power over means of production by people in that firm, and thus a form of private property. Productive property owners can and will use this power to secure a bigger share of social production for themselves.

Markets transactions inevitably generate secondary or side effects on others who are coerced because they weren't a party to the transaction. If i buy gas for my car, it's just between me and the oil company. I can force my exhaust fumes into your lungs by polluting the air. This is a "negative externality" and these are pervasive in market systems.

A market system tends to produce for private consumption because it's based on private transactions but there are many public goods that cannot be reduced to private transactions...the sidewalks and roads, health care, defense against foreign attack, public education, and many other things.

I personally don't see "communism" as an adequate idea because i don't think it is feasible for an economy to work without a personal incentive for people to do work ffor the social benefit, incentive in terms of their own consumption as well as collective benefit, and i don't think a system without money would work. An effective economy needs a way to measure costs and benefits.

However, i believe that it is possible for a worker-managed, classless economy to do these things without markets, through a system of horizontal grassroots planning based on interactive negotiation between consumers and communities, on the one hand, and worker industrial organizations, on the other.

"I personally don't see "communism" as an adequate idea because i don't think it is feasible for an economy to work without a personal incentive for people to do work ffor the social benefit, incentive in terms of their own consumption as well as collective benefit, and i don't think a system without money would work. An effective economy needs a way to measure costs and benefits."

I've always been interested in whether a post-capitalist economy would have currency. I would like to think it wouldn't need to. The personal incentive you mention, could it not be work itself (that you enjoy in a democratically controlled environment) and the well-being of knowing that your job benefits yourself, your community, and the larger society? We all agree that work under capitalism sucks, but that is seems to me that under communism individuals could gravitate toward the positions that interest them with 'undesirable' work split democratically amongst all able bodies (ex: teach for 40 weeks out of the year, pick up trash for 4, and have the rest off). My other concerns would be, would everyone get paid the same? If not, who would decide how much each job is worth? To me, currency-less communism is the logical economic system because it is impossible to determine any one individual's input into the economy. Second, who would print the money? That seems like it would take some pretty heavy centralization. If there was pay, couldn't even a minor discrepancy in wealth lead individuals to see themselves as better than others (they've worked harder, save better, etc) and that economic hierarchy is natural?

It seems to me some sort of large scale gift economy would be the ideal set-up, but not in some ridiculous lifestylist sense, instead large warehouses where massed produced goods would be distributed to all and, if an item was in short supply, would be rationed according to need. Of course, i also think communism would bring production much more down to the local, so if something was produced by a local artisan, some sort of waiting list, once again with need taken into account.

Anyway, no set ideas, just want to see what you think. Really enjoying the convo.

actually, I don't know, it might be pertinent. As the point of the tread is to convince someone to the desirability of libertarian communism, proving how lib communism would lead to technology being used for the public good (less work, more stuff!!) would be beneficial. I'm actually just really enjoying the conversation, if you do start it up on another thread, i'll be sure to join you.

I would hope that in any real free society - Free Market types would be free to try and make a market work, as long as they don't attempt to coerce anyone to participate. There's no reason why genuinely Libertarian Communism and a genuinely free market can't exist alongside each other, other than one system proving itself to be inefficient at fulfilling the needs and desires of it's participents.

The capitalist mode of production was only able to take root after centuries of primitive accumulation had created a large expropriated class and a concentration of the means of production and social wealth in the hands of a few. "Markets" didn't "corrupt" great masses of previously upstanding serfs and peasants into proletarianship.

The use value of libcom.org just declined for me.

oh rly?

the pipe was passed around the indians from one to the other smoked, then passed around, the enjoyment came from giving the pipe to a white man, who smoked it and took it away, years later these same indians came across the white man who had stored the pipe on his mantelpiece when they asked to smoke it he was angered - the pipe was for a museum, he didn't want them to have it.

i can talk about indians in america if i like?

seeing value means that you can use your imagination to look beyond what is around you - it isn't capitalist to find value in things - that's subjective to believe that value is capitalist. surely?
a beautiful sky can have value - this has nothing to do with owning the sky