Market Anarchism

a bad one

Market anarchist - is that like a person who hates the authority of the grocers? DOWN WITH YOUR TICKET GUN! DOWN WITH BAR CODES! UP WITH BOGO! UP WITH COUPONS!

Propaganda of the five-finger-discount?

Why are you worrying about labeling yourself - or getting other people to stick labels on you? Read up, think things through, rather than imagining strangers can fathom your mind.

Life is full of contradictory ideas, select the ones that appear to fit together.

FS98,
You would appear to describe a minority current within both 'anarcho-syndicalism' and 'mutualism' but personally I'd just say that you are a supporter of a reformed capitalism.

You would just be a mutualist who supports syndicalist means, but don't qualify as an 'anarcho-syndicalist', since all class struggle anarchism including the latter are (or should be) opposed to any form of capitalism.

Try 'mutual-syndicalist' or 'syndicalist-mutualist'.

markets increase inequalities

There's lots of articles here on libcom that goes more in-depth on the subject of 'market socialism' than a wikipedia article. I would suggest you use the search function at the top right corner.

Socialism won't and can't have markets. Markets require private ownership, so the best you can hope for is self-managed capitalism. This is the core critique anarchists have of Proudhon, mutualism, or co-ops.

That said, maybe try thinking about how anarchist organizing methods can improve your life in the the here-and-now, as opposed to worrying about particular anarchist labels.

I just don’t get how a system works, which claims wage labour no longer exists, though goods are bought and sold in the market place.

So after buying stuff, people are expected to give their services (labour) for free? It’s a half-arsed system, which claims that someone with purchasing power can expect others to help them transport their private property for a, “Thank you very much – now piss off!” (Not even a minimum wage!)

but I think that syndicates should compete in a regulated market

why not cooperate?

Would I be both an anarcho-syndicalist and a mutualist?

You would not be a mutualist since mutualism comes from mutual, but since you want competition there will be a loser and a winner and thats not mutual. Mutual means there will be a winner and a winner and no losers

Chilli Sauce

Socialism won't and can't have markets. Markets require private ownership, so the best you can hope for is self-managed capitalism. This is the core critique anarchists have of Proudhon, mutualism, or co-ops.

Actually, if that is the "core critique" then you don't understand mutualism or capitalism. Markets require private ownership of products and predate capitalism. Capitalism is not even"private ownership" of the means of production for artisans and peasant farmers can do that -- it is wage-labour, private ownership of the means of production with hiring of workers by the owners.

Mutualism is not "self-managed" capitalism but rather self-managed socialism because the means of production are socially owned and run by associations. There is no wage-labour -- people who join a co-operative have the same rights, freedoms, etc. as existing members.

May I suggest the following:

Proudhon, Property and Possession

Anarchist Organisation – Practice as Theory Actualised

Property is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology

At least for starters.

The core critique of mutualism is, i would say, twofold. First, rewarding people according to deed (labour) is problematic - for reasons Kropotkin's indicated well. Second, market forces are such that competition produces many unintended consequences -- such as working longer, harder to survive on the market.

I discuss the first reason in the Introduction to Property is Theft! and the second in section I.1.3 of An Anarchist FAQ.

Maybe we can get away from self-contradictory notions as "self-managed capitalism" and actually understand that capitalism equals wage-labour rather than "the market" as such. This is ahistoric, to say the least.

Gulai Polye

but I think that syndicates should compete in a regulated market

why not cooperate?

Yes, we need to show that co-operation is better -- but if some people don't want to cooperate, then what? Either you let them work by themselves and exchange their products or you collectivise them by force. Only one of those options is libertarian.

Mutualism is not "self-managed" capitalism but rather self-managed socialism because the means of production are socially owned and run by associations.

Yes, but those associations control their particular means of production and then exchange their products on the market. Collectively owned and managed private property is still private property.

So, yes, theoretically, you could have very different form of wage labor from the type traditionally seen under traditional capitalism. But these worker-managers, after exchanging their products on the market, will have to pay themselves some sort of wage from the profit generated.

You might not like the term, but that sounds like self-managed wage labor to me.

Anarcho

Gulai Polye

but I think that syndicates should compete in a regulated market

why not cooperate?

Yes, we need to show that co-operation is better -- but if some people don't want to cooperate, then what? Either you let them work by themselves and exchange their products or you collectivise them by force. Only one of those options is libertarian.

If a few individuals dont want to cooperate then that is their choice. But overall the flow of society should be in the direction of cooperation not because its being forced but because that is what benefits mostly.

The same can be observed in the way the states are organised. The states that are cooperating with each other like the EU states benefits more than those states who are isolated like North Korea.

But people should have the liberty to disassociate themselves because it is the primary non violent weapon you use against corruption and thus belongs to the core of anarchism. When people are not allowed to disassociate then we get the state.

'Disassociation' seems on the face of it a reasonable anarchist principle in abstraction but in an interconnected social world is more difficult in practice perhaps apart from small isolated totally self-sufficient communities or at an individual level 'hermits'.

Yeah cause forced association is such a wonderful thing

A 2nd International Marxist Anarchist..

In general, though, it generally goes without saying that society is a whole and denying this in favour of atomised, 'free' members of a vague international system - with no real economic specification - would merely favour capitalist atomisation, caiptal - the logical conclusion of the law of value or subordination of concrete labour to abstract labour as somehow its end - generally, and its spread. The contradictions of capital are not left to wait until capital appears in its hallowed form - apparently from nowhere - but identified immediately with commodity fetishism and the commodity form generally, and obviously without any contradictions in this hardly-innocuous base there would be none in capital which is derived from it and which it leads to. Any establishment of a new, social mode of production was going to imply some homogeneity. Communist elements cannot, of course, regard capitalistic formations with passivity, if they truly believe that their form of 'association' is correct. A social system is, obviously, established by homogeneity - not the decisions of atomised particulars in the mode of the Robinsonades -, and without this you can merely have communism gutted and dried, which will hardly serve it.

Whether or not the market is compatible with anarchism or principles of liberty is more ambiguous. In all likelihood it is possible. The market system of capital was not based primarily on personal hierarchy at its centre, but rather a 'levelling' hierarchy of impersonal, unconscious forces, and a merely partial critique of it could be compatible with it in some sense, and often is.

Market anarchist - is that like a person who hates the authority of the grocers? DOWN WITH YOUR TICKET GUN! DOWN WITH BAR CODES! UP WITH BOGO! UP WITH COUPONS!

Perhaps strangely, it's quite different. That would perhaps be called something like 'Amarket anarchism.' Or 'American anarchism' as a possible short-hand.

... And I should perhaps add for clarity to my brief comment in post No 19 that whilst some factors in any future world human community would require organised co-operation at a world level many others would presumably involve decentralisation and the application of the principle of subsidiarity at varying levels depending on circumstances, but none of us either individually or collectively can 'disassociate' ourselves from our responsibility to contribute to collective decision making at the appropriate level and then to abide by those collective decisions - such collective organisation in a classless society based on useful production of our needs does not amount to any form of 'state'. There can be no ''well if I can't have it my way it's my ball and I'm taking it away''!

Zeronowhere

A 2nd International Marxist Anarchist..

what?

Any establishment of a new, social mode of production was going to imply some homogeneity. Communist elements cannot, of course, regard capitalistic formations with passivity, if they truly believe that their form of 'association' is correct. A social system is, obviously, established by homogeneity - not the decisions of atomised particulars in the mode of the Robinsonades -, and without this you can merely have communism gutted and dried, which will hardly serve it.

Its true that some form of homogeneity must exist, and that homogeneity is that there is equality in the means of production which in itself becomes a denial of capitalism and from that you get a new social society.

Or as Proudhon said it:

Free association, liberty — whose sole function is to maintain equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges — is the only possible, the only just, the only true form of society

Agent of the Proletariat

Try 'mutual-syndicalist' or 'syndicalist-mutualist'.

I wrote this in post #8 five years ago and it is a suggestion that you should not take seriously because any combining of those two labels would only result in a corruption of syndicalism in my view, which is far more important.