Reading Recommendations for a Fellow Anarchist

omen

...I baked you an anarchy cake

No, no, no, omen!

There's no such structure as a cake!

It's just flour, eggs, butter, sugar, etc., lying alongside each other on a table.

ComradeAppleton doesn't recognise the counter-revolutionary apparatus of an 'oven', or the counter-revolutionary act of 'baking'.

ComradeAppleturnover

There is nothing more I can learn from you.

Not even cookery? Surely you like cakes!

ComradeAppleton

I have tried my best to awaken any spirit of independent thought in you, but all you have issued in reply is insults and insinuations.

Appleton, you make a dogmatic Marxist look like a fucking free-thinker. That's the reason I depict you in my cartoons with a bucket over your head.

ComradeAppleton

Since I have had enough reading insults, do not bother replying further :) There is nothing more I can learn from you.

I guess I should have read this bit before hitting reply, then...

Besides, I was officially declared the winner of this thread a couple of pages ago, so anything I've posted since has been nothing more than a victory lap.

ETA: I was really hoping you would say "I didn't come here to be insulted," so I could say "Well, where do you normally go?" But you're not even a very good foil.

ComradeAppleton

Making a cartoon is not altering reality.

They made you type an awful lot of angry and confused words in response. If I hadn't made them, you would have posted slightly fewer angry and confused words. Ergo, I have altered reality, and you are my puppet...

ComradeAppleton

I realize it is difficult for you to explain or clearly articulate your ideas

Thank ye koindly, Sur, for 'splainin you're oideas to the loiks of us simple country folks...

ComradeAppleton

omen

I was officially declared the winner of this thread a couple of pages ago

If that is what life is about for you[...]

Yes, because that was an entirely serious comment, and I live to pwn random strangers who post shit on the internet. :roll:

ComradeAppleton

the only way you can get any gratification is through other people

Well, we can't all be onanists...

ComradeAppleton

Farewell omen!

Don't let the door hit you on the way out...

ComradeAppleton

But a single self-determined will is something you clearly lack.

But at least I can bake a cake!

The social theory of recipe, the social technology of an oven, and my practical activity, during which I learn and improve, creates a cake which did not exist before, only the isolated ingredients.

But this, I realise, is as nothing compared to your 'willing' of a cake into existence.

A 'triumph of the will' - a Nietzsche sponge.

Now that ComradeAppleton has left us*, who's up for a game of strip poker?

* Unless it was meant as one of those "Stop being mean to me or I'll leave the internet forever! ... Oh, I've come back for now, but just you wait!" type posts that people write when they lose arguments on the internet.

ComradeAppleton

The will is freedom. Freedom from phantoms invented by tricksters and priests.

And freedom from cakes baked by cooks.

ComradeAppleton

This is the exact opposite of what actually happens.

Oh, are you back already? That didn't take long...

ComradeAppleton

All you did was accept it when other people told you that the cake exists, where there is no cake

I posted a fuck'n picture of it, mate! Until you can post a picture without a cake in it, my evidence trumps your imagination any day of the week.

ComradeAppleton

who fool the emperor into thinking he is wearing clothes

Any internet discussion wouldn't be the same without the ubiquitous "Emperor's New Clothes" reference. Can we have an Orwell reference now, to complete the set?

ComradeAppleton

Freedom from phantoms invented by tricksters and priests.

???

ComradeAppleton

The will is freedom. Freedom from phantoms invented by tricksters and priests.

so you're actually saying freedom comes from thinking your free? if you believe it hard enough it will be true?

An i've being meaning to ask, how come you say society doesn't exist, but you never say the same about property?

radicalgraffiti

so you're actually saying freedom comes from thinking your free? if you believe it hard enough it will be true?

Oh, so that's what he meant when he said "Farewell omen!" He thinks I'm his imaginary friend, and if he really concentrates hard enough he can make me disappear. Hang on a minute...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Nope, I'm still here! Phew!

ComradeAppleton

No, cakes baked by cooks can be delicious. There is nothing wrong with cake. Especially cake that I can actually see and touch. That kind of cake is good. It is only your imaginary cake (society) that I have a problem with.

Well, I'd take my hat off to you if I was wearing one! That's a powerful piece of philosophy you got going on right there, Comrade. We're mere insects by comparison to your genius. Right up there with the best of Nietzsche! Well done!

ComradeAppleton

Especially cake that I can actually see and touch.

Aha! But you can't touch a cake! Remember, structures don't exist!

If you touch that 'structure' on the table, I'll say, using your method, that "no, you're touching sponge", then "no, you're touching cream", then "no, you're touching jam", then "no, your touching candy sprinkles".

To 'see' a cake requires a social concept of what a cake is. 'Cake' has a history.

Unless omen puts a 'cake' in their brilliant cartoon, along with the spitfire, castle, dinosaur...

Or perhaps T. Rex did eat cake?

LBird

Unless omen puts a 'cake' in their brilliant cartoon, along with the spitfire, castle, dinosaur...

No, but I did this instead:

ComradeAppleton

There is no such thing as a social concept. There are only concepts, and they exist only on the individual level.

And you made up your own language to express the concept of "cake", which coincidentally just happened to resemble the languages used by all of the other individuals around you, which also just happened to resemble each other, or did your concept of "cake" consist of a picture of a cake in your head?

On ComradeSimpleton's terms, communication would pretty much be a miracle.

ComradeAppleton

Because I am hearing a lot of totally crazy ideas now, I will attempt to summarize your position. I just want to see if I have this right, so please instead of the usual unrelated insults just tell me if I'm at least in the ballpark with this:

Dang! And I already made this:

[/quote]

[ETA: Damnit! I just realized I confused Lassie with Skippy the Bush Kangaroo! My sincerest apologies, Australia!]

But on with the serious stuff...

ComradeAppleton

I am a part of society, which is the totality of people and their interactions on earth. This society has always existed (at least as long as people have existed).

Society is not fixed, and constantly evolves, roughly starting with early tribal societies, through feudalism, then capitalism, but that's pretty much right.

ComradeAppleton

I only speak language because of society and pretty much every detail of my life has been shaped by my historical and social circumstances.

Not every detail, but much of it, particularly the fundamental stuff like language and class. But, yes, more or less.

ComradeAppleton

Because of this I can never be independent and autonomous; I will always be part of society. Whatever interaction I have with any other individual also automatically becomes a social interaction which affects the whole society.
Therefore any thought that I have about self-determination or anything of that sort is an illusion. I am actually only acting as I have been socially programmed to act. [etc]

And this is where it all goes terribly wrong. I don't think any of us have said anything like as extreme as that above quote. But you can never be genuinely independent. Think of it like gravity (I'm sick of cakes now!): It constrains your actions to some extent, you can't just leap into the air and fly away, but you are free to jump a bit and move about the Earth's surface. That's half of what we are saying, the other half is that society is necessary for freedom in any pleasant kind of sense, that is, it doesn't just constrain you, but also enables you, by giving you, for example, language with which to think and communicate. Without society -- genuinely without it -- you would be a naked, mute wolf-man scavenging for scraps and berries in the wild!

ComradeAppleton

Is that kind of what you have been trying to explain to me? I know there has been a lot of sarcasm and monkey behaviour in this thread, so I tried to keep this post as serious and succinct as possible.
Please correct me if I'm wrong on anything because, like you have been saying, I cannot effectively respond to something I don't understand.

You actually seem sincere for once! And I mean that in a good way! Really!

You get an "up" for that, and not a pity one this time!

OK, this is a biggy, so I suggest you only reply to the points that bother you the most to save it getting even bigger.

ComradeAppleton

I did not say [society] was fixed, but that's beside the point.

OK, but you did say "This society has always existed" (my emphasis), so you'll have to forgive me if I misunderstood.

ComradeAppleton

You claim that there is a social evolution (dare I say, progress?) happening.

Well, evolution (in the biological sense) doesn't necessarily imply improvement, and that wasn't what I meant to imply. For example, I guess Mayan society evolved something like: tribal -> some sort of urban feudalism -> tribal (collapse of urban feudalism) -> feudal (under Spanish occupation) -> capitalism, maybe with some localised and short lived attempts at socialism of one kind or another.

ComradeAppleton

My question would be - how do you determine which of these phases you named (tribal, feudal, capitalist - and following Marx's determinism - socialist, or communist) are better than others?

Much as I would choose between anything else in life (e.g. buying a new computer). In this case I'd look at the conditions people lived under, look at evidence from the different periods (where it exists), for example written accounts, being careful to distinguish those written by the "rulers" and those by the "slaves" (if they existed in those societies), and compare them. As for socialist/communist societies, I don't believe a genuine one has existed other than localized and short lived attempts, and then under exceptionally harsh circumstances (e.g. Spanish Civil War). I don't count the Soviet Union, say, as communist, because I would take "worker control of the means of production" as a rough definition of communism, and in the case of the USSR the state owned the means of production, and workers had no control of the state at all (as they might in a democratic state, say). Plus, life in the USSR was shitty, as many people who live there would tell you.

As for genuine communism, I'd have to make an educated guess, same as you would in your individualist utopia.

ComradeAppleton

You are quite clear in your assertions that you are a communist, so I would be curious to hear why communism is in any way superior to other societies.

I'd probably just call myself an anarchist actually (but not in the exclusive sense you use the term), but I'd accept libertarian communist. Short answer [ETA: turns out it wasn't so short!]: under libertarian communism you wouldn't have to work for most of your day and most of your life in an (often) pointless job you hate, for a boss you hate, just about scraping by, or living an even shittier life on the dole (if you're lucky). IMO, most labour is squandered under capitalism (look at how much unnecessary disposable shit it produces, and how people are convinced to regularly throw away perfectly usable items for slightly better versions). Under libertarian communism people would only make what is needed, would work much fewer hours, mostly doing the jobs they liked, and without a boss to annoy them, share around the shitty jobs that have got to be done anyway (so they wouldn't take up so much of any one persons day), and you wouldn't have to worry about unemployment because the products of society would be made available to everyone due to the over abundance of labour. Also, you'd have more freedom in your personal life (in part because you have more free time), and an actual say in how your workplace was run.

As it happens I listened to this radio programme yesterday (a repeat of a 1994 broadcast), on pretty much this subject (although he doesn't make reference to socialism, what with it being the BBC and all). It's quite funny and to the point.

ComradeAppleton

After all you have to have some objective measuring stick of 'goodness' to answer this question.

To know that working a shit job, for shit pay, under horrible conditions, etc. is not a good thing? It's a value judgement and hence subjective, but I'm pretty sure large numbers of ordinary workers agree with it (even if they don't agree with or understand socialism) and that's what matters.

ComradeAppleton

omen

Think of it like gravity

Don't you think it is a bit ridiculous to compare human interactions (which are regulated by will and can be changed momentarily through an act of choice) to physical interactions between lifeless objects (which are totally outside of our control)? This analogy seemed crazy to me when Bakunin made it and it seems crazy now when you make it.

Because you aren't entirely "free", even in a libcom society, to do whatever you want, but you would be freer than in a capitalist society, say, and freer still than in a fascist society. There is no such mode of existence as total freedom. The example I gave of a dumb, naked, wildman, scavenging and gathering berries, though unconstrained by any society, is not free either, and is heavily constrained by nature. It would be a poor, brutal and short existence.

You couldn't, for example, just declare yourself the King of England (even if you wanted to, no one would recognize you as legitimate), print your own money (and expect other people to accept it), speak your own personal language (and expect people to understand you), you couldn't pollute a reservoir without the locals getting uppity, etc. As my example was meant to highlight, you are "free" but within limits, but those limits also provide structure to enable you to be as free as you can. In the case of gravity, it stops you being able to leap into the air and fly away at will, but it also stops you and all the oxygen floating off in space and asphyxiating, leaving you free to wander around the Earth's surface and breathe.

ComradeAppleton

And most importantly:

omen

society is necessary for freedom in any pleasant kind of sense, that is, it doesn't just constrain you, but also enables you, by giving you, for example, language with which to think and communicate. Without society -- genuinely without it -- you would be a naked, mute wolf-man scavenging for scraps and berries in the wild!

This seems to be a very radical statement. First of all, the word "pleasant" implies an aesthetic judgement of pure opinion, so that is just your own judgement which cannot be applied to any other human being (who may have a different aesthetic opinion).

By "pleasant" I was referring to the wolf-man/wildman example. Such a creature would be without society, and if you want to regard that as freedom, it would be a very poor form of freedom.

ComradeAppleton

Second of all, you make a huge leap of faith from claiming that without society (ie. interacting with other people) I would be a wild animal (which is not at all the case anyway),

As I said, purely and totally outside society (an extreme example for sure) you would have no language, hence be unable to form any concepts, have no upbringing (family counts as a part of society), no one to pass on knowledge to you (hence you couldn't build anything more than rudimentary tools, and possibly not even them), no one to make things you couldn't make yourself, and so on. Lest you think I'm just making this up, this very occasionally does happen: one case I know of, a girl was kept locked in a darkened room by her parents, continually tied to a home-made "potty-chair" until the age of fourteen (or thereabouts), only provided with basic food and water, and they never spoke a word to her, apparently. No one but her parents knew she existed. Eventually she was discovered and rescued and cared for. She never learnt to speak anything more than a rudimentary sign language, as she'd effectively skipped the developmental stage of language acquisition, and so it was virtually impossible for her to learn anything. She had to have people do everything for her, and she eventually disappeared, as an adult, into the US mental health care system, and (from what I heard at the time) no one knew where she was at that time.

Now I don't for a moment think, that is what you mean by society not existing. Your neighbourhood of friendly individualists, producing for themselves and trading amongst each other, which you seem to think is somehow not a society, is a just particular form of society. (There are people, and social relations between those people, such as a common language, general friendships, trading, etc.) And the people here don't think it is a particularly good form of society, at least not for long, because in such a society, in our considered opinion, there is nothing to stop people accumulating wealth, and then using that to exploit others.

Example: much of the US started out from small Mom & Pop businesses, but ended up with huge corporations controlling everything. Another: After the fall of the USSR, citizens where all given shares in privatized companies that used to be the state companies, but due to their virtual worthlessness, massive unemployment and food shortages, most people sold their shares for peanuts, and they were acquired by a relatively small number of what are now known as Russian oligarchs (billionaires who were often mobsters, who used their capital from their blackmarket activities to buy up all the shares and became super-rich).

All these small businesses won't be able to make a living some will go out of business, others will be bought up, often cheaply, because people need to eat, these people will then need to work for someone else because they don't have a business or enough money to start one up (because they had to sell cheap) and even if they could start another one up, they couldn't compete with all the large businesses that were being created from the bought up smaller ones, and eventually you end up back where we are. It's already happened before. And there's no reason it won't happen again.

ComradeAppleton

to the fact that 'society' has any right to force me to behave a certain way. At least that's what I think you were implying before with all the talk about democracy, etc; requiring me to behave in a certain way.

I didn't say this, and no one here has. Generally you would be left alone in a libcom society, even if you refused to participate. However, you couldn't just do anything you liked, if it affected other people. Say you wanted to dump raw sewage in the reservoir, for some reason: I think it would be legitimate for people to stop you from contaminating everyone's drinking water, as long as they didn't use unreasonable force (e.g. shot you in the head rather than talk it over with you). If you refused to stop doing it, it would be within reason to remove you from the reservoir, using reasonable force if necessary, and to prevent you from returning to continue polluting. This is not unreasonable, and in examples such as this: you causing harm, intentionally or unintentionally, to other people, it is not unreasonable to society to prevent you behaving in a specific way (polluting drinking water).

I hope you see what I am getting at here.

ComradeAppleton

The second does not follow from the first. Just because you give me a gift, does not mean I have to give you a gift. Or vice versa. And what about all those people in society who hold me back and who I don't want to have anything to do with? Why should they have a say in what I do?

They shouldn't, unless you adversely affect them. And no one here has said otherwise, except your good self when putting words in our mouths.

ComradeAppleton

Personally I can't imagine capitalism as we see it today surviving even one day if most people adopted a way of living similar to mine. I make it a point to avoid useless consumerist nonsense and focus on the important emotional aspects of my life.

Lifestyle choices to make yourself feel superior. And sound pompous. Wont end capitalism.
In any case, when you link 'effort' and 'reward' thus...
ComradeAppleton

It is important to note, however, that some people would still prefer to work longer hours and have more 'stuff'.

You make it clear that you arent against 'capitalism' anyway, just want your little version of it.

ComradeAppleton

I am for free human relations and voluntary organization. That's all.

That's what capitalists say.

Damn, how much did I miss?

After reading all the way to post #329, I still don't think ComradeAppleton has a clue what we're talking about.

ComradeAppleton

First off I'd like to say that I find your criticism of today's system rather timid. Basically you are critiquing the phenomenon popularly known as 'consumerism'

No, I wasn't at all. Read that section again. I am familiar with critiques of consumerism, and I find them largely pointless and they have nothing to do with what I wrote. The only reference I made to it was in regards to wasteful production. I was not concerned in the slightest with the consumption of goods, but how much labour is squandered in pointless overproduction. In a libcom society production would be scaled back to what is necessary, giving people more free time, which they could either use personally how they wished, or could spend some of that time, if they so wished, producing things that go beyond the necessary. I also mentioned workers having control over the workplace and there being no bosses. Try agitating for that, and see how timid bosses, government, police, media, etc. think it is. Striking workers have had the shit beat out of them by police, for less than that.

ComradeAppleton

If I was critiquing the current system I would say that the problem is not consumerism, but exploitation (as I am sure you also know and acknowledge).

*slaps forehead* Yes, I took it as read that capitalism was exploitative, and went into some of the more practical reasons: lack of control over work, working hours, wages, etc. And listed some of the alternatives, control over workplace, etc. I didn't mean to suggest that wages should merely be higher, and bosses nicer, just that there shouldn't be any bosses, wage labour, etc. This has nothing to do with consumerism at all.

ComradeAppleton

By the way, I am very glad you have moved away from the communist label. Anarchism is not about communism,

No, I didn't move away from it at all, just gave my preferred terminology. And plenty of anarchists regard themselves as communists and vice versa, even if you don't consider them to be the same thing. You don't own words, you know...

ComradeAppleton

So I was wondering, now that you have explained your ideas on the question of society, if you could elaborate on this question of "adverse effects"? How exactly would you determine where the collectivity can step in and stop an individual (or group) and where the individual should be left to his/her own devices.

This, like most things, is subjective. I would suggest using your noodle. It's doubtful anyone would agree exactly, but that hardly matters. And such limits would be decided democratically in a libcom society (since they potentially affect all people). Where meaningful, evidence would be considered.

Example: we have speed limits on roads, in an attempt to reduce the frequency and severity of road accidents. There is no exact speed where a car goes from being dangerous to safe, but this doesn't mean we just throw up our hands in the air and declare the impossibility of setting speed limits, and just let everyone drive around at as fast as their cars will go in built up areas. We look at evidence (scientists study road accidents and collect data), and make informed decisions about where to draw limits: e.g. 70mph on motorways, 30mph in built up areas, in the UK. In the US they have a 55mph limit on major highways, I believe. It's arbitrary, to an extent, and not everyone agrees with set limits, but it's better than the alternative of no speed limits.

They tried this when the UK motorways were first opened, and the minister for transport freaked out when he stood on a bridge over a newly opened motorway, and watched cars bombing up and down at 120mph. They also had to place other "crazy" restrictions on motorway drivers' freedom, when they found drivers were performing U-turns (there were no central reservations then), and stopping by the roadside -- on a fucking motorway! -- to have picnics.

The penalty for speeding in the UK (which no one even got to vote on), is a fine, points on your licence, maybe a driving ban in serious cases, or at worst a short term in prison in the most extreme cases (e.g. death caused by dangerous driving). Now in a libcom society, I see no reason why anyone would vote for harsher penalties than that, since, as you said, people are mostly decent, and probably they would be a lot less harsh, since people would surely recognize that the laws could be applied to them: e.g. in a worst case scenario (causing death), take away the car and ban them from driving, possibly for life, if they get caught driving then take more serious action to prevent them from doing it again.

ComradeAppleton

Why don't you just be honest and say what you mean, which is: "I am a communist and will not tolerate any non-communist relations anywhere in the world, no matter what manner of relations they are and no matter what the opinion of the people involved is."

You're putting words in peoples' mouths again, Comrade. That is why people get frustrated with you.

ComradeAppleton

PartyBucket

ComradeAppleton

I am for free human relations and voluntary organization. That's all.

That's what capitalists say.

Communists and anarchists also say that. So who is right, and why?

Yeah 'Communists and Anarchists' might not add the "Thats all"....maybe we think theres a little more to it, for example your worst nightmare of everything being held in common?...propertarian twats like you like to pass off a lot of things as "voluntary" and "free" that are of course actually completely exploitative.

I think there are some things that have not yet received an answer. For example, ComradeAppleton's insistence that the "commune" or "macroeconomic democracy" is oppressive and totalitarian, far worst than Hitler. All he gives us is some lame reasoning that the "workers in one enterprise will make decisions in another enterprise", which is not quite the case. If he can provide another reasoning, that would be great; but he can't, because he doesn't grasp the essence of the system we're proposing. He doesn't understand how it would work or what's its purpose in the first place. Hence, why he asks (and I'm paraphrasing): "when should a collective stop an individual and when should an individual be left to his own devices?"

ComradeAppleton is yet to explain his insistence on having 'markets' and 'competition', division of labor, eight hour workdays, money, uneven development, police states and/or private security forces (to protect property), imaginary cakes (but no real cakes), gadgets and stuff stored in basements, rapists, Atlas Shrugged, and a whole bunch of other questionable stuff. Can't he see that his market-based vision of "everyone owning their own plot of land and producing stuff, and having a say exclusively on their self-produced stuff, where Jimmy produces hot dogs, and Billy makes pairs of shoes, and Billy trades 40 pairs of shoes with Jimmy in exchange for 50 hot dogs, and stores it all in his basement, and stuff, and where time stands still" is going to lead us nowhere? Can't he see that it might in fact lead us to what we have today? Support (you don't really support; you just allow) for workers controlling their own enterprises doesn't let you off the hook.

And why doesn't ComradeAppleton leave (not the thread, even though he said he would) capitalist society; step outside the system and live free in isolated wilderness. After all, he said he doesn't care about what relations other people have. His first concern is himself. He's indifferent to the (and I'm paraphrasing) "systems or structures (capitalism, socialism, communism, mutualism, etc.) people live under". Who's stopping him now from becoming a "truly, liberated individual". It's very contradictory for someone who says he has the right to leave a structure he doesn't want to be part of, yet remains.

Its not really a matter of whats 'acceptable' to me .
However I certainly dont accept your premise that there could be a situation where wage labour can be 'free' or 'voluntary'. Only capitalists try to make out it can ever be so.
I am most certainly the 'enemy' of conservative propertarians, you are right there.

Agent of the Fifth International

ComradeAppleton is yet to explain his insistence on having 'markets' and 'competition', division of labor, eight hour workdays, money, uneven development, police states and/or private security forces (to protect property), imaginary cakes (but no real cakes), gadgets and stuff stored in basements, rapists, Atlas Shrugged, and a whole bunch of other questionable stuff.

And let us not forget about wage slavery and the so-called "free" and "independent" media companies.

As to you wanting me to read post #322, I don't think it was an honest attempt to explain our position. There was just more distortions as usual.

ComradeAppleton

This is very simple really. People are mostly decent and outside of war or Africa gang rape is not on anyone's to-do list. Neither are murder or theft. People with such desires will always exist, of course, but they are really a marginal minority.

I have no idea what you have against Africans. If rapists and murderers are a "marginal minority" outside of Africa, then they must be a majority in Africa. Is that how it is? You make me sick; you and your fascistic idealism.

ComradeAppleton

omen

No, I wasn't at all. Read that section again. I am familiar with critiques of consumerism, and I find them largely pointless and they have nothing to do with what I wrote. The only reference I made to it was in regards to wasteful production.

This doesn't hold up. If consumerism is not the main problem

Critiques of consumerism focus almost entirely on the consumption of goods, and almost never on the production of goods. At their worst, they tend to regard consumption of goods as being something akin to religion, and focus on on things like culture-jamming, drop out lifestyles, dumpster diving, recycling, and the like. About the only time they recognize the workplace as being exploitative is in third world sweatshops, and then their solution to this is a consumerist one: ethical consumerism. Their solution is to buy AdBusters Red Spot Clown sneakers instead of nasty Nike trainers. They consider this revolutionary. It isn't.

The communist solution is for workers to take over the workplace and run it themselves, and for this to be done all across society and across the globe. At least that is the ultimate goal.

Stop focusing on consumerism, I don't give a damn about it, and it has nothing to do with my argument.

ComradeAppleton

There is nothing "wasteful" about satisfying wants and needs. All of life is about satisfying different wants and needs!

Goods aren't made to last: that is wasteful. Electronic devices are often obsolete long before their life is over: that is wasteful. Most of the wants are created, that is why capitalists usually spend way more on advertising that on research and development. Most workers can't even afford the goods they make, so their wants are hardly satisfied, and in most of the world their needs are barely satisfied at best. Etc.

Quite why you are arguing this point, I don't know since, most of these things wouldn't even exist in your utopia, as they require large scale production in specialist collectively run factories. Unless you are expecting artisans to handcraft iPhones in their workshops? In which case, they will be in short supply, if they even exist at all. If you go with the factory idea, then we're back to the long working days and drudgery, etc.

ComradeAppleton

The truth of the matter is that if you do not want to buy these consumer goods, you don't have to work nearly as much as most people do.

And again you totally miss my point. The point is not that workers work to buy shit, it is that they work to get paid, so they can pay rent, bills, for medical insurance (in some countries, like the US), debts accrued when they desperately needed to borrow money they didn't have, etc. Only a relatively small number of better paid workers buy the bulk of the luxury consumer goods. Most people on the planet don't even own a phone, let alone the latest model iPhone. It is capitalists that primarily benefit from wasteful overproduction, not workers (as consumers), as you assume.

[*** If you respond to only one point in this post, make it this one above -- it is my key point.]

ComradeAppleton

There is no need to get hostile with me again. But you know you don't own words either - make sure you remember that..

I'm not getting hostile. You've repeatedly told anarchists what the word means and that they are not anarchists. (And most people here consider themselves anarchists, I think. I know it looks like I only just joined, but I was a regular here a few years back under a different name.) And I never said there was only one definition, so don't turn this back on me!

ComradeAppleton

Please don't start once again making comments about me not understanding what you mean - we have talked about this for a while and you have specified quite clearly what you mean by democracy, participation, voting, etc.

Yep, and you're still not getting it. See particularly the section I marked above with ***.

ComradeAppleton

These methods, however, are not acceptable to me...

Yeah, well you started this thread to ask us what our views were, we've told you, you're still misunderstanding, and we don't much care about your views as we've all heard this before (and I don't just mean from you). To be honest, I'm not really sure what you are getting out of it.

ComradeAppleton

Well PartyBucket can at any moment tell me[...]

"Well he started!" is not an argument that should be used by anyone over the age of five. Six tops.

ComradeAppleton

I do not care if totalitarian types are 'frustrated with me'.

And there you go again. This site is called libcom and not totcom, for a reason.

ComradeAppleton

These people are my enemies

And you wonder why no one here takes you seriously! This is just people talking shit on the internet, not the fucking Stalinist purges. I'm getting a whiff of teary-eyed Goth again...

ComradeAppleton

Agent of the Fifth International

As to you wanting me to read post #322, I don't think it was an honest attempt to explain our position. There was just more distortions as usual.

If you don't think anything I say or do is honest, why are you still reading this and commenting on this thread? Just to be a busybody? Don't have anything better to do? Feeling lonely? Or maybe you just need a scapegoat to mouth off at? I have seen many pathetic people like you... You probably have a very unsatisfactory personal life, so you take your frustration out on others. Classic example of a name-calling bully.

And making derogatory aspertions about the state of another posters personal life makes you what?
Cunt.

ComradeAppleton

As for PhotoBucket, who we have clearly established is not my comrade :) I don't really care what you think or find acceptable.

Why then did you muse upon it directly in post 338?

ComradeAppleton

As for the comments about Africa, I am very surprised nobody here knows that most gang rapes and other stone-age tactics still take place there. Forced marriages, cutting off people's hands, enlisting children in armies, compulsory circumcisions... things like that. Look for things like that in the Middle-East and Africa. In most other places such things are now treated as unacceptable.

I assume this is some kind of tactic to turn the whole world against you continent by continent, until you have achieved some sort of solipsistic critical mass, and you really do achieve total independence, as literally no one on Earth will give you the time of day.

Agent of the Fifth International

ComradeAppleton is yet to explain his insistence on having 'markets' and 'competition', division of labor, eight hour workdays, money, uneven development, police states and/or private security forces (to protect property), imaginary cakes (but no real cakes), gadgets and stuff stored in basements, rapists, Atlas Shrugged, and a whole bunch of other questionable stuff. Can't he see that his market-based vision of "everyone owning their own plot of land and producing stuff, and having a say exclusively on their self-produced stuff, where Jimmy produces hot dogs, and Billy makes pairs of shoes, and Billy trades 40 pairs of shoes with Jimmy in exchange for 50 hot dogs, and stores it all in his basement, and stuff, and where time stands still" is going to lead us nowhere? Can't he see that it might in fact lead us to what we have today?

Best explanation for why this thread needs more value theory.

All deviations from the true communist path™ and revisionisms™ including but not limited to market socialism, Parecon, social democracy and GDR style centrally planned markets (which was in itself social democracy taken to its logical conclusion) can be traced to a faulty reading of Marxian value theory.

Oh if people would just read moar Kapital! And of course would adopt the one and only true interpretation (© Karl Marx 1867).

Railyon

Best explanation for why this thread needs more value theory.

He's not figured out the difference between property and possessions yet, so I think you will be fighting a losing battle with that one.

ComradeAppleton

But to accuse me of not understanding the distinction is just meant as a pure insult because it is not at all true.

Look, mate, it's not an 'insult' to accuse you of 'not understanding' the Communist perspective. Put simply, you don't. That's why this thread has interminably gone round in circles, with many posters trying their best to explain to you answers to the questions that you've asked by initiating the thread.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that if you continue to explain to us from your individualist perspective you'll have some success. You won't.

If you want to hold onto that perspective, then fine; but you've had your answer, and at great length, from a Communist perspective, so why continue to ask for answers for which you clearly have no intention of putting into their own perspective?

We're Commies, ffs, and you're not. Simples!

This thread went to shit when the cartoons stopped.

ComradeAppleton

omen

He's not figured out the difference between property and possessions yet, so I think you will be fighting a losing battle with that one.

First of all, you are again insulting my judgement.

No, A simple observation. As you tacitly admit here:

ComradeAppleton

It is you who have redefined possession along Marxist lines, I only use the original meaning of the word..

There are many definitions of property, neither the Marxist nor your version are the "original". But you came here asking us to explain our point of view to you, which we did, and which means using our definitions. You then persisted in falling back to using your definitions when talking about our views which is why you fail to understand our views. Hence your repeated and nonsensical (using our definition) assertions that communists want to take your property (they don't), or have a say in how you use your property (they don't), etc. And hence my rhetorical question from earlier in the thread "Do you own a huge fuck'n factory?" I'm guessing not.

ComradeAppleton

But to accuse me of not understanding the distinction is just meant as a pure insult because it is not at all true.

No one here wants to take your damn "property" (possessions), and your repeated assertions that they do is based entirely on your misunderstanding of the distinction between property (factories, industrial machinery, etc) and possessions (underpants, toothbrush, hammer, shovel, house, car, etc). You don't own a cement works, car manufacturing plant, etc. so it is a moot point.

ComradeAppleton

As for the point you wanted me to respond to above, I agree that the exploitation by capitalists is taking place all across the world. But this exploitation is not due to "wasteful overproduction".

I never said that it was. Read what I wrote. That is a large part of your problem.

ComradeAppleton

This is because, as I explained before, there is no such thing.

I already dealt with that. It's not my fault you don't get it...

ComradeAppleton

Demand is always higher than production precisely for the reason you stated above - most people do not yet have iphones (and a large proportion of those who don't have them, want them).

Yes, people sitting around in your favourite continent of Africa in tin shacks, with no clean running water, no sewage system, electricity, jobs, little food, etc. are constantly fretting over not having the latest iPhone. :roll:

As I said demand for luxury goods is largely manufactured, hence the immense amounts of money spent on advertising.

ComradeAppleton

If everyone cared only about goods being long lasting, then that would be what was sold.

Cobblers! No one has any say in how long goods last but capitalists. If a capitalist was stupid enough to make TVs that lasted forty years, they'd soon put themselves out of business.

ComradeAppleton

I also fail to see why libertarian communism would change the goods being produced - the people are people, why would their wants and needs change just because the production system is different?

People don't like to spend 8+ hours a day 5+ days a week toiling to make stuff they then don't have the time or energy to use and enjoy. And as I said earlier, make the necessaries first, then worry about the luxuries second. It should be entirely voluntary. Do you seriously think that people who work in a shitty iPhone factory in China actually enjoy toiling away there (there were an alarming number of worker suicides reported not so long ago in factories making iPhones), and that if they had a say they would be likely to continue working there of their own free wills?

Also, their wants would change as they wouldn't have advertisers endlessly convincing them to want shit they most likely wouldn't want otherwise. And their wants have changed considerably over the centuries. Consumerism is a relatively recent phenomenon, and is tied closely to the rise of the advertising industry.

ComradeAppleton

Exploitation happens for a simple reason: monopoly.

No it doesn't. All it needs is a class of owners and a class of people that have no choice but to work for them in order to live even a modest existence. Small business versions of capitalism are every bit is exploitative as monopoly capitalism, and there is every reason to believe they are worse. I'm pretty sure many people here, with experience of these things, have reported working for a small business is often worse than working for a large company, because smaller companies have to squeeze workers more in order to turn a profit.

ComradeAppleton

And your insinuations that individualism leads to a complete dissolution of industrial production are just silly. There is no reason to suppose cooperation and large factories will disappear if people become individualists...

You need organization to operate a large factory. You reject all organization. Ergo, no factories.

ocelot

This thread went to shit when the cartoons stopped.

Yes, I agree entirely. I'll see what I can do about that...

ETA: I'll take requests for a general plot, 'cause I'm drawing a blank for the moment.

ETA2: Never mind, I'm going to plagiarize and old Steptoe and Son episode instead...

As promised:

ComradeAppleton

This is very simple really. People are mostly decent and outside of war or Africa gang rape is not on anyone's to-do list. Neither are murder or theft. People with such desires will always exist, of course, but they are really a marginal minority.

First of all, the way you phrase this seems as though you’re blaming people or “individuals”. In your reasoning, these people aren’t “civilized” enough. Perhaps, we should colonize them again.

ComradeAppleton

As for the comments about Africa, I am very surprised nobody here knows that most gang rapes and other stone-age tactics still take place there. Forced marriages, cutting off people's hands, enlisting children in armies, compulsory circumcisions... things like that. Look for things like that in the Middle-East and Africa. In most other places such things are now treated as unacceptable.

The reasoning you put forth that these things are allowed or “treated as acceptable” doesn’t make your racist opinion justifiable. Here, you make an observation based on present appearances, and ignore the historical and social conditions that makes these unfortunate things possible. But, what else could we have expected from you? You are, after all, a reactionary idealist. You believe people’s actions are driven purely by ideas, rather than under certain circumstances. That’s why you pulled out the following bullshit earlier in our thread:

ComradeAppleton

The world is based on ideas (or as you say "abstract philosophical concepts") and people have to accept and agree with ideas before any of them can be implemented……

……When slavery was being abolished, it was not a matter of one man having one idea. It was a matter of a few men living on a mission of propagating those ideas until they reached more and more people.

I guess capitalism was, at one point in history, a good idea! Everyone, by a consensus-based agreement, decided to implement it. That’s very nice! And what about slavery? In your opinion, the abolishment of slavery was the work of one or a few men; who gives a damn about the millions of people who suffered under slavery; who cares what they think or feel.

ComradeAppleton

Furthermore any objections that we are indebted to the past or owe something to the future are mere assertions which make no sense. I don't owe anything to anyone who is dead because they can't have a claim on me anymore - they are dead. Dead people don't deserve anything from me. The same is true of future people. Future people don't exist therefore they have no claim on anything of mine or anything I do. The individual can only live in the present, not in some "historical continuum".

I guess you don’t mind leaving your grandchildren with a whole load of shit to swallow. Well, after all, it’s “your” utopian system, and you don’t want to be responsible for whatever mess it makes. And it says a good deal about how “great” your system is. Sustainable? Efficient? The answer to those is whatever pleases “me”.

omen

I assume this is some kind of tactic to turn the whole world against you continent by continent, until you have achieved some sort of solipsistic critical mass, and you really do achieve total independence, as literally no one on Earth will give you the time of day.

Yes. The whole world is against you. People in the Middle East and Africa are driven by profound hatred for Mr. ComradeAppleton. You must hide!

Your thinking is very primitive Mr. ComradeAppleton. More backwards than monkeys. After all, monkeys and human beings evolved from the same ancestors. Your evolution seems to have been disrupted in the early process. Oh, wait! I forgot. You don’t believe in evolution. You think it’s some “abstract idea” whipped up by communists in a plot to take over the world. My bad.

As for your claim that we don’t tolerate non-communist relations; that’s completely false. But you wouldn’t tolerate communist relations. You insist on everything being determined by markets. You definitely won’t allow democratic planning and coordination across different or similar industries, or worker’s controlled productive enterprises within the same geographical location. Because democracy beyond the individual workplace would be “totalitarian”. But whether or not it is totalitarian (based on your fixed, timeless, iron-like laws), you have to agree that it would be more beneficial if workplaces were able to act in union (say under the democratic planning of the democratically-controlled “commune”) than having these workplaces compete amongst each other within a so-called “free” and “fair” market economy.

More fun and frolics:

(Click to read.)

"To the extent that commodity production, in accordance with its own inherent laws, develops further, into capitalist production, the property laws of commodity production change into the laws of capitalist appropriation."
K. Marx, Capital Vol 1 Ch 24

Last comic instantly reminded me of this quote.

ComradeAppleton

omen

No one here wants to take your damn "property" (possessions), and your repeated assertions that they do is based entirely on your misunderstanding of the distinction between property (factories, industrial machinery, etc) and possessions (underpants, toothbrush, hammer, shovel, house, car, etc). You don't own a cement works, car manufacturing plant, etc. so it is a moot point.

Then maybe you could give me an exact definition of property and an exact definition of possession. That way I won't be confused anymore. It seems that you chose to say that property is the means of production, while possessions are consumer goods. But correct me if I'm wrong.

ComradeAppleton

And on that point, did you ever think that you are making an absolutely baseless division there between product and capital?

It's a fucking definition! You could define "property" as "things found on the moon", if you so wished, but it would be pointless. Communists choose to define property and possessions in the way they do, because it makes a clear distinction between things used to exploit workers (only capitalists own factories, so workers have to work for capitalists, and under conditions set by the capitalists), and things that aren't used to exploit anyone (things owned by the workers, and in a personal capacity by capitalists).

I guess the main reason for this definition is 160 or so years of pro-capitalist idiots accusing communists of stupid baseless things along the lines of: "Workers, don't support communism, because the nasty communists want to steal from you!" When in fact they really mean is the communists want to steal from them (the capitalists).

ComradeAppleton

After all, one person's product is another's capital, and vice versa.

And now you've redefined, capital! Honestly, reading anything written by you is like being this bloke:

[youtube]_jh8ErGFBpE[/youtube]

ComradeAppleton

Can you please clarify this a little

What is the point of asking yet more questions about new things when you are still stuck on the basics?

ETA:

(Click for biggy.)

ComradeAppleton

Then maybe you could give me an exact definition of property and an exact definition of possession. That way I won't be confused anymore. It seems that you chose to say that property is the means of production, while possessions are consumer goods. But correct me if I'm wrong.
And on that point, did you ever think that you are making an absolutely baseless division there between product and capital? After all, one person's product is another's capital, and vice versa. You can't really definitively say that something is only product or only capital.

Just to make things easier (no it won’t): the means of production (land, natural resources, tools, machines, factories, office buildings, etc.) are privately owned by a few capitalists, in what can be further called a ‘class monopoly’. As socialists, we object to this ‘class monopoly’, and wish to abolish it. In its place, we would like to place these means of production under social (or ‘common’) ownership. But the capitalists justify and defend their ‘class monopoly’ with the abstract concept of ‘private property’. Once the means of production are put under the democratic control of the people, it can be called ‘social property’.

Personal possessions are the goods and services (toothbrushes, cakes, pieces of clothing, furniture, personal computers, refrigerators, etc.) that we consume for our own satisfaction. For such items to exist requires labor and the means of production. The ‘means of production’ and ‘personal possessions’ are qualitatively different from each other and serve different functions. The function of the former is to produce the latter.

ComradeAppleton

Can you please clarify this a little: how would you decide what the 'necessaries' are and what the 'luxuries' are? Is that totally voluntary - everyone picks for himself/herself what is 'necessary' and what is a 'luxury'? Because it seems to me that many people can have very different answers to this question.

Necessities are those basic goods and services (food, housing, clothing, sanitation, education, medical services, etc.) that we, as human beings, need to survive and live a decent life. If there’s anything that production should first be focused on, it’s these necessities. ‘Luxuries’ (iPhones, jewelry, yachts, etc.) are items that are of secondary importance to ‘necessities’; as the survival of life, biologically and mentally, doesn’t depend on it. Unless you’re like:

ComradeAppleton

Oh my god! I can’t live without an iPhone. I’m going to die if I don’t have one in five seconds from now.

Anyways, from the point of view of the people in control of production, I can’t see why they would not place primary importance on producing necessities first. I mean, why would they want to continue their focus on producing growing quantities of iPhones, while they have a shortage of food (hypothetical situation)?

ComradeAppleton

It is very curious though that you don't see something Proudhon clearly saw - that capital and product cannot be separated that easily. One person's product can be taken by another person and used as capital. In other words things you named among 'possessions' (a car for example) can be used as means of production (by providing services like transportation). That is what I mean by one good being both a product and possible capital. Another good example would be an oven, which is a product but it can also be used as capital (in the manufacture and then trade of baked goods). That is how a bakery works, and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with having a private bakery...
So things are not as simple as you portray them.

Holy cow! The hideous explanation written above is seriously retarded. I'm sorry if I offended anyone with the use of the 'r' word.

ComradeAppleton

Maybe instead of just shouting out random insults, write something constructive for once!!! You know, supposedly society taught you how to read and write, so you can use that ability here, show off, and tell me what you think is so 'retarted'?

First of all, I didn't insult you. I was describing what was written in the text I quoted. Secondly, I did write something "constructive"; check post #362. Thirdly, I can see how well adequate your self-taught "individualist" education is, based on your misspelling of the word 'retarded'.

ComradeThick

It is very curious though that you don't see something Proudhon clearly saw - that capital and product cannot be separated that easily. One person's product can be taken by another person and used as capital. In other words things you named among 'possessions' (a car for example) can be used as means of production (by providing services like transportation). That is what I mean by one good being both a product and possible capital. Another good example would be an oven, which is a product but it can also be used as capital (in the manufacture and then trade of baked goods). That is how a bakery works, and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with having a private bakery...
So things are not as simple as you portray them.

You really are thick, aren't you? If you would just accept that there is such a thing as the 'social' you would easily understand the qualitative difference the same object can take in two very different situations. In one instant the car is individually consumed, in the other it's productively consumed (as capital). The former is as a possession, the latter is private property. Your 'individualism' (though it's not that, it's jihadi solipsism) makes you blind to social phenomena.

ComradeAppleton

It is very curious though that you don't see something Proudhon clearly saw - that capital and product cannot be separated that easily..

wtf capital is the means of production how is that hard to get?

ComradeAppleton

I see omen that you have gone back to your insulting ways... I have tried to be courteous and honest with you, but I guess that didn't help.

Appleton, it isn't just me. When you first started this thread asking apparently innocent questions about what we believe, people were polite to you. You almost instantly began dismissing the answers given to you and started throwing around accusations about people, who were only trying to help you after all, being totalitarian, thieves, implying they were stupid, blinkered, dogmatic, or whatever. I don't believe for one minute you started this thread in good faith. You came here to reinforce you own personal views, and enact some kind persecution fantasy. One man against the world, and all that. You also act dumb, and I believe it is an act, purely to provoke people, so you can claim the moral high ground, and act all horrified and offended. With your passive-aggressive posting style, it is hardly surprising that every single other person on this thread has turned against you.

ComradeAppleton

I just don't really understand why you're always so pissed off. I already know you're not capable of answering simple questions without mocking the person who asks (as all elitists do), but I had no idea you're so emotionally unstable...

If you're trying to make me angry, as your passive-aggressive pop psychology above suggests, then you've utterly failed. I eat trolls for breakfast, mate. Do not mistake astonishment at your stupidity for anger.

I understand that one object can have two uses. But it's still the same object, and the owner of the object can do whatever he/she wants with it.

And this sums up your understanding of social relations. In other words, it's not an understanding at all, just a willful exorcism of reality.

So anyway, I have this theory that Comrade Appleton really and truly hates to hang around here, loathes every minute of it and is desperate to leave at all costs, but with him being an individualist and all, his ego is so huge that he is psychologically incapable of leaving without having the last word, and since we keep replying to him, he feels compelled to post one last message in the hope that no one will respond, and that is why he gets more and more obtuse with every post, hoping we'll get so baffled by his apparent stupidity that we'll be speechless.

For ComradeAppleton,

Marx's letter to J. B. Schweizer, "On Proudhon":

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/letters/65_01_24.htm

Karl Marx

The deficiency of the book (Proudhon's) is indicated by its very title. The question is so badly formulated that it cannot be answered correctly. Ancient “property relations” were superseded by feudal property relations and these by “bourgeois” property relations. Thus history itself had expressed its criticism upon past property relations. What Proudhon was actually dealing with was modern bourgeois property as it exists today. The question of what this is could have only been answered by a critical analysis of “political economy,” embracing the totality of these property relations, considering not their legal aspect as relations of volition but their real form, that is, as relations of production. But as Proudhon entangled the whole of these economic relations in the general legal concept of “property,” “la propriété,” he could not get beyond the answer which, in a similar work published before 1789, Brissot had already given in the same words: “La propriété’ c’est le vol.” The upshot is at best that the bourgeois legal conceptions of “theft” apply equally well to the “honest” gains of the bourgeois himself. On the other hand, since “theft” as a forcible violation of property presupposes the existence of property, Proudhon entangled himself in all sorts of fantasies, obscure even to himself, about true bourgeois property.

Karl Marx later in the same letter

For an estimate of his book, which is in two fat volumes, I must refer you to the refutation I wrote. There I have shown, among other things, how little he had penetrated into the secret of scientific dialectics and how, on the contrary, he shares the illusions of speculative philosophy, for instead of regarding economic categories as the theoretical expression of historical relations of production, corresponding to a particular stage of development in material production, he garbles them into pre-existing eternal ideas, and how in this roundabout way he arrives once more at the standpoint of bourgeois economy. [“When the economists say that present-day relations – the relations of bourgeois production – are natural, they imply that these are the relations in which wealth is created and productive forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature. These relations therefore are themselves natural laws independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus there has been history, but there is no longer any” (p. 113 of my work).]

and finally again

“Every economic relation has a good and a bad side, it is the one point on which M. Proudhon does not give himself the lie. He sees the good side expounded by the economists; the bad side he sees denounced by the socialists. He borrows from the economists the necessity of eternal relations; he borrows from the socialists the illusion of seeing in poverty nothing but poverty (instead of seeing in it the revolutionary, destructive aspect which will overthrow the old society). He is in agreement with both in wanting to fall back upon the authority of science. Science for him reduces itself to the slender proportions of a scientific formula; he is the man in search of formulas. Thus it is that M. Proudhon flatters himself on having given a criticism of both political economy and of communism: he is beneath them both. Beneath the economists, since as a philosopher who has at his elbow a magic formula, he thought he could dispense with going into purely economic details; beneath the socialists, because he has neither courage enough nor insight enough to rise, be it even speculatively, above the bourgeois horizon.... He wants to soar as the man of science above the bourgeois and the proletarians; he is merely the petty bourgeois, continually tossed back and forth between capital and labour, political economy and communism."

He sounds like he could be describing ComradeAppleton, a petty bourgeois fascist!

Last few pages can be summed up in one word, basically...

Fetishism

I think he finally hung up the phone.

Victory!

"But as Proudhon entangled the whole of these economic relations in the general legal concept of “property,” “la propriété,” he could not get beyond the answer which, in a similar work published before 1789, Brissot had already given in the same words: “La propriété’ c’est le vol.” "
this is intersting to me because the start of "what is property" states that the phrase "Property is robbery! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of revolutions! " leading me to think that "property is theft" has a earlier organ than Proudhon despite many statements to the contrary

ComradeAppleton

I understand that one object can have two uses. But it's still the same object, and the owner of the object can do whatever he/she wants with it.

it looks like you fail to understand that ownership is a social concept

Railyon

Fetishism

OK, now, I swear I hadn't seen that post while I was doodling this:

That was in my head, now it's in yours!

I guess I'll make that my last one of those. Thank you, thank you! I'm available for other threads, weddings and bar mitzvahs.

[I plan to start a thread on something more serious, next week. (OK, I'll do cartoons too, damnit!) Something about some ideas I've had for a few years about Individualism and Communism in popular culture. Think: Chomsky's propaganda model adapted from the news media to the entertainment media, with some extra bells and whistles. Appleton's not invited, as he'd probably shit himself at the suggestion that capitalists fund movies to push individualism and dis communism.]

ComradeAppleton

Second, who is going to prevent me from establishing private enterprises?

HE'S GOT US THERE

EDIT: Oh no wait he hasn't.

Indy Vidualist: "Oh hai, i know we live in communism, but ive set up a private business selling apples i grow in my field. Thanks for providing me with all the training, tools, land and resources needed to set that up for free, by the way. Want to buy 5 of my apples?"

C. Ommunard: "Er, no thanks mate, im a member of a world-wide federation of communes, and weve got fresh fruit imported from the four corners of the world availible in large quantities, for free. So no, i dont want your apples. Going to the orgy later?"

ComradeAppleton

Second, who is going to prevent me from establishing private enterprises?

Not who. What? A: other than the lack of money, the lack of a market, the lack of exchange and a commodity society, nothing.

Classic ancap confusion of reciprocity with exchange based on "barter illusion". Exchange is not barter. Nor is it reciprocal in any way.

With reciprocity I do a favour for someone. That person then feels obliged, when I need a favour, to reciprocate.

With exchange I sell a good or service to some stranger. That stranger gives me money, which obviates any obligation of reciprocity on her part. With that money I can now go and demand a service or good from a third stranger. I have done nothing for that person, she owes me no obligation for reciprocity. Why then does she give me what I want? In return for the money. Why? Because she needs the money - the money here represents a portion of the command of capital. Her provision of goods or services to me is not voluntary but governed by compulsion. What is the root of that compulsion, the wage-relation? It is the separation of producers from the means of producing their own subsistence - sell yourself or starve - that is the compulsion, the anonymous violence of the labour market.

ocelot

ComradeAppleton

Second, who is going to prevent me from establishing private enterprises?

Not who. What? A: other than the lack of money, the lack of a market, the lack of exchange and a commodity society, nothing.

But what about establishing small enclaves of simple commodity producers? Other than the obvious possibility of those not having access to all the shit they'd need to get their production running (thinking mainly of raw materials here)

Also, MUST CRUSH THEM ALL innit

Who would they sell to? What would they buy? Who prints the money? Who sets the interest rate? Who decides who gets credit and who doesn't?

Simple commodity production is bourgeois ideology straight out of that muppet, Engels' head. Has never existed, never could exist.

ocelot

Who would they sell to? What would they buy? Who prints the money? Who sets the interest rate? Who decides who gets credit and who doesn't?

1. Themselves/each other (which raises the question, why commodity production in the first place? Just so they can keep people off their lawn?)
2. Their own stuff basically
3. All of them
4. Anyone who lends money
5. Same

Doesn't even work in theory, but I'm just sayin'. Also racked-up home defense with spring-guns and booby traps to keep them commies from grabbing your stuff. (This I've actually seen people propagate)

ComradeAppleton

In the words of George Carlin said: Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal?

Papa Appleton Shmoove* sells fucking:

[*Taken from an online pimp-name generator.]

So exploitation is bad, but reporting rape to the police immoral, and you're fine with prostitution?**

[**Not that I'm saying it should be illegal, since that is often more harmful for sex-workers, but it is quite clearly exploitative and not something I'd personally endorse with a glib quote.]

So the list of people who would rather Appleton took his individualism to its logical conclusion and just took up life as a hermit in a cave somewhere hundreds of miles from civilisation, and preferably one without broadband, currently stands as:

:arrow: omen1
:arrow: everyone on libcom2
:arrow: communists
:arrow: Africans
:arrow: women

Which currently stands at well over 50% of the Earth's population. If he keeps going the way he is it will simplify the list somewhat to "everyone but (or possibly including) Appleton."

• 1But I would miss him terribly!
• 2I trust I'm not being presumptuous here?

ComradeAppleton

radicalgraffiti

ComradeAppleton

I understand that one object can have two uses. But it's still the same object, and the owner of the object can do whatever he/she wants with it.

it looks like you fail to understand that ownership is a social concept

Ownership is a social concept - if you only have one person there is no need for ownership because he/she can just take whatever he/she wants without causing conflict with anybody. In the same way friendship, solidarity, mutual aid, etc are social concepts.

As for your utter rejection of private ownership of capital, all I have to say is that if giving gifts is okay, and giving people rides in my car is okay, why isn't it okay for people to give me stuff for me giving them rides? But - gasp - that's evil! .

In the words of George Carlin said: Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal?

Second, who is going to prevent me from establishing private enterprises? The police? I think even in a democratic society you envision the majority of people wouldn't feel threatened by peaceful commerce. Because peaceful commerce is not a threat to anyone, except Plato's minions who say that all evil comes from trade.

I think somebody forgot to hang up the phone. Or how to hang up the phone.

omen

So exploitation is bad, but reporting rape to the police immoral, and you're fine with prostitution?**

Don’t forget about colonial imperialism.

Well we know where he stands on women, blacks and communists. We're still waiting to hear about Jews and homosexuals though.

Was it just me, or did ComradeAppleton did in fact become increasingly more reactionary, reductionist, dogmatic, and dumb-ed down towards the latter half of this thread? In my opinion, he was a bit more respectable in the earlier parts of the thread, contributing more thoughtful and complex questions and opinions. What happened? What could have possibly made him go down this road? Did we beat his soul? Did we shatter his "plot of land" dream? Is he cringing in his heart? Moaning like a wilder beast?

Agent of the Fifth International

Was it just me, or did ComradeAppleton did in fact become increasingly more reactionary, reductionist, dogmatic, and dumb-ed down towards the latter half of this thread?

Apart for the stupid racism, misogyny, etc. for a few pages he seemed to be slowly getting what we were saying, but then his poor brain got overloaded and he got a lot worse again, and started declaring us his "enemies", and "totalitarians", for supposedly wanting to make him do largely unspecified things that he apparently very much didn't want to do (it was all a bit vague and abstract, and with far too many cake examples). I particularly like how he spent much of the thread distancing himself from Ayn Rand, when he was repeatedly compared to her, but eventually he admitted he liked some of her ideas, and I don't think he meant she had some good cooking tips...

Agent of the Fifth International

What happened? What could have possibly made him go down this road? Did we beat his soul? Did shatter his "plot of land" dream? Is he cringing in his heart? Moaning like a wilder beast?

Inability to cope with having been wrong. Or at least, feeling the need to defend one's own position (beyond what is reasonable)... I mean come on, we all know that feel innit?

ComradeAppleton

People are so unequal ...

This exposes the basis of your ideological views, mate. You don't seem to realise that 'inequality' is a product of society, rather than a biologically fixed ration of something.

Luckily for you, we recognise your inability to engage on this thread as an equal is down to your ideological brainwashing since childhood by our bourgeois society, and so have tried to help develop your abilities in every direction, as much as we can.

ComradeAppleton

...redistributing the product of their labour will definitely piss some of them off.

Well, it will piss off people like Bill Gates, because at present capitalism 'redistributes the product' of the workers of Microsoft to him. That is what is 'unequal', mate, not 'people'.

But then, you're still stuck at the level of biological analysis, whereas we're all far more developed, and use the higher level of 'social analysis', y'know, for 'society'.

ComradeAppleton

...the ones who don't care about being exploited I don't have much sympathy for.

Not more dopey crap from Nietzsche! Try and keep up, or are you 'unequal' to the task of discussion amongst equals?

ComradeAppleton

I understand your answer... it seems in your future everyone is a communist and communism is universal. Luckily christian-style utopia is not for this earth, so I don't have to worry about that being true.

You seem to be in the habit of describing anything remotely egalitarian or based around communal ownership as nothing more than a sort of latent Christianity. I'm curious; are you just trying to needle a mostly atheist crowd by comparing them to religionists, or do you genuinely think Christians are the only people in the whole of history who ever came up with the idea that maybe sharing stuff could be a good thing?

If the latter then you are of course wrong. But there you go.

ComradeAppleton

the ones who don't care about being exploited I don't have much sympathy for.

They're the 'ones' you'll contractually engage in free and fair wage labour I presume.

I assume he or she's going along with the Nietzschean idea that Christianity - with its idea that humans are equal - is the ideology that leads to all kinds of ideological things like communism s/he hates. So when they say 'christian-style utopia' they mean an egalitarian society.
I really hope at this stage people are only engaging with the Comrade for jokes, not to try and persuade them anything!

mons

I assume he or she's going along with the Nietzschean idea that Christianity - with its idea that humans are equal - is the ideology that leads to all kinds of ideological things like communism s/he hates.

This is also pretty common in certain conservative ideologies. I recall historian Götz Aly who thinks the Nazis 'happened' because the Germans were 'jealous' of the Jews and were striving for intranational 'equality' (the Volksgemeinschaft thingy). I get the willies just thinking about that brainpoop, class analysis fucking where?

This is totally in line with the Austrians who take 'National Socialism' at face value. Interestingly enough they operate on the same level of abstraction as Trots who think any nationalization is a step towards socialism.

LBird

Arbeiten

Also, Emergent properties

While I think it is wrong to say the sum is greater than the parts (some borg-communist shit right there)

Unfortunately, Arbeiten, the notion of 'emergent properties' does imply 'the sum is greater than the parts'.

OK, just a slight clarification, in this post quoted above I was suggesting emergent props. as a reading, and the next sentence is just a different point (hence leaving a line. Perhaps I should have made this clearer. I am not saying emergence is the be all and end all of the debate, it just makes interesting reading). I don't want to get too far into this (take us way out of the remit of the thread. But I think in complex systems the whole sums vs. parts dichotomy becomes nonsensical. So it is a bit of a bad proverb to illustrate a point. Sorry about that.

ComradeAppleton

Arbeiten

'I can just unplug from this society shit willy nilly' (crude individualism).

If by 'unplug from society' you mean that starting tomorrow I will talk to no one, interact with no one, and refuse to accept anyone's services or help, then you are correct. But this is a misrepresentation of what I have been trying to say. I oppose abstract collectives like 'the nation', 'state', and 'society' because they are groups of people which claim me as their own. People say that these groups have a right to lay claim on my person and property because I am (despite all my will) part of them. Such is the nature of slavery. You are born into this system, and there is no escape says the society-man (socialist). But if you work for us you will get true freedom in cooperation say the anarchist communists. In other words, arbeit macht frei.

Yes, Arbeit, Macht Frei indeed. What nonsense. Godwin's law anyone?

Nonsense aside I agree about the the abstract claims of collectivities. Althusser calls this interpellation. The subject is always, in a sense, subjected. I guess I differ in that I don't think we can ever fully will/wish ourselves out of groups. There is a constant negotiation between individuals and groups, that's what the social is unfortunately. I'm sorry.

But come on, this thread is getting a little boring, going around in circles with crap strawmen. Anarchist communists do not 'claim' you (and that guy a few pages back who threatened you with violence is not an anarcho-comm. by his own admission) Anarchist communists do not say work for us they say work with us. As I said a few pages ago, you are free to piss off to the woods if you want. I, as an anarchist communist, respect your right to do this (in this silly abstract 'when capitalism is gone' game. In this respect I think when Apple brought up the Republic briefly he wasn't far wrong. We should realise that a lot of this 'after the revolution' stuff is idealism of the worst kind. But I am sure I have said this before).

radicalgraffiti

proudhon wrote an entire book against property.

:D . Good point. Apple being rather naughty with his partial referencing again (like bakunin earlier in the thread).

[quote=ComradeAppleton]omen

This is very simple really. People are mostly decent and outside of war or Africa gang rape is not on anyone's to-do list.

This is absolutely despicable. Horrid little wolf in 'I'm just trying to be a simple power hating individualist' sheeps clothing. Just like Ron Paul.

ComradeAppleton

Indeed this discussion will keep going for eternal circles I guess, because everyone here is not only happy to be created by others, but your very philosophy is dependent on the fact that we are all products of history and society and must remain thus. For all your talk or organization and revolution there is not an iota of rebellion in you.

I'm wondering, what is the difference between being created by others and incessantly quoting Nietzsche. While I personally like some Nietzsche I think he is a crafty little shit. You seem to have fallen over his mystique head over heels. Geoff Waite in his book Nietzsche's Corp/se makes a good point here. Have you ever thought about the interpellation of a text? How a text hails us, puts us, in the position of the reader, as the person 'in the know'. There is a tendency amongst Nietzscheans to consider themselves the future people to come, the free spirits, the ones who laugh and dance. I think this is often in large part, because Nietzsche told them so.

ComradeAppleton

Certainly she makde more sense than Marx anyway. For all his babble and thousands of pages of absolutely meaningless nonsense I haven't found one good fragment.

I am going to wager that you have never actually read marx past a cursory 'introduction to'. Next on the reading list. Capital.

LBird

ComradeAppleton

...redistributing the product of their labour will definitely piss some of them off.

Well, it will piss off people like Bill Gates, because at present capitalism 'redistributes the product' of the workers of Microsoft to him. That is what is 'unequal', mate, not 'people'.

True, true. Also, we are in a sad state of affairs if we reduce the inherent creativity of human beings to 'producing things for money'.

OK. I have responded to quite a bit, but got bored of reading the thread....

Since I can actually have a conversation with you, Arbeiten (unlike with a certain isolated participant on this thread), I'd like to point out some disagreement between us.

Arbeiten

...I think in complex systems the whole sums vs. parts dichotomy becomes nonsensical.

On the contrary, I think that the 'whole system' approach is invaluable for Communists in explaining society as opposed to the separate individuals who make up society. 'Emergence' of system properties and behaviours is at the heart of this distinction between 'sums vs. parts'. For example, a 'wood' is not just individual trees; it is those trees, but in a specific relationship (eg. closeness) which allows an eco-system to 'emerge', something that wouldn't happen if those same trees were each further apart from each other. A 'plantation' is not a 'wood', but the same trees can be reconfigured in their relationship to form either 'structure'.

Arbeiten

...you are free to piss off to the woods if you want. I, as an anarchist communist, respect your right to do this...

Who or what social structure gave you permission to allow CA to piss off to the woods? Surely, in a Communist society, a commune would be deciding if any individual is, or is not, 'free' to occupy our common treasury? 'Pissing off to woods' is a social and political act: we may have other uses for the said woods.

ComradeAppleton, if you feel 'equal' enough now to participate on these other issues, be my guest!

LBird

Arbeiten

...I think in complex systems the whole sums vs. parts dichotomy becomes nonsensical.

On the contrary, I think that the 'whole system' approach is invaluable for Communists in explaining society as opposed to the separate individuals who make up society. 'Emergence' of system properties and behaviours is at the heart of this distinction between 'sums vs. parts'. For example, a 'wood' is not just individual trees; it is those trees, but in a specific relationship (eg. closeness) which allows an eco-system to 'emerge', something that wouldn't happen if those same trees were each further apart from each other. A 'plantation' is not a 'wood', but the same trees can be reconfigured in their relationship to form either 'structure'.

Well yes, but then it's not a pure addition of parts to a sum (like in a partition), it's a dialectical relationship. Which I think does not contradict what Arbeiten said because these relationships overcome the limits of the 'sums approach' he calls into question. Operating on the sums level is something the neoclassical macroeconomists do. But for them there are no social relations between parts of the totality, only atomized individuals on the micro level aggregated to a sum. Which is still fundamentally different to our approach.

At least that's how I read it.

LBird

Since I can actually have a conversation with you, Arbeiten (unlike with a certain isolated participant on this thread), I'd like to point out some disagreement between us.

Arbeiten

...I think in complex systems the whole sums vs. parts dichotomy becomes nonsensical.

On the contrary, I think that the 'whole system' approach is invaluable for Communists in explaining society as opposed to the separate individuals who make up society. 'Emergence' of system properties and behaviours is at the heart of this distinction between 'sums vs. parts'. For example, a 'wood' is not just individual trees; it is those trees, but in a specific relationship (eg. closeness) which allows an eco-system to 'emerge', something that wouldn't happen if those same trees were each further apart from each other. A 'plantation' is not a 'wood', but the same trees can be reconfigured in their relationship to form either 'structure'.

But humans are not trees and societies are not woods*. The feed back between wholes and parts is much more complex (and sub wholes, that makes up parts of other wholes etc, etc). 'Agency' here is unavoidable (even if it has unintended effects or, happen behind our backs, or whatever). As I said, this takes us quite far from the initial thread. I'm at work right now so I can't go into this more fully (I'm not sure I will ever get around to 'answering' this problem properly.**

LBird

Arbeiten

...you are free to piss off to the woods if you want. I, as an anarchist communist, respect your right to do this...

Who or what social structure gave you permission to allow CA to piss off to the woods? Surely, in a Communist society, a commune would be deciding if any individual is, or is not, 'free' to occupy our common treasury? 'Pissing off to woods' is a social and political act: we may have other uses for the said woods.

Lets say if I am ever in a commune and one person wants to do it alone somewhere, I for one will support his/her right, as a member of the commune, for him/her to expel themselves. I notice you highlight communism in my quote but left anarchism un-highlighted. 'The commune' actually is a great way to help us think through the complex of structure and agency. 'The commune' would surely be about people being able to reassert control of their lives, it is not something that is dictated, in this way it is not a 'social structure' that 'gives me permission' like you have illustrated it here. As I said, this is gross idealism, Apple can be on an island, in a forest, on a ledge on a cliff or whatever. But, yes, what if, what if, what if ad infinitum.

* In my last post I had initially reiterated my dislike for analogy but had deleted it. Probably should have left it in!

** Your post seems to suggest that I have thrown the baby out with the bath water. I do not for a second believe structures are un-important. I just want to see the relationship between structure and agency argued in a more nuanced way.

N.B. Just seen. Yes Railyon, exactly (almost). I was being wary not to say a 'dialectical relationship' because it has too much baggage with previous LBird threads (and, in a sense, a I do think it is banded around by people too often as self-evident what we mean by it).

Railyon

Operating on the sums level is something the neoclassical macroeconomists do.

I think you might be misunderstanding the issue here, Railyon. It's not a question of 'addition' or 'sums', but that the 'sum' is greater than the 'parts': in other words, the 'whole' is more than its 'contituents'.

The neoclassical economists can't see the emergence of qualitatively different higher-level phenomena, but just 'quantitify' numbers. My apologies if I've misunderstood your point to Arbeiten.

Railyon

Well yes, but then it's not a pure addition of parts to a sum (like in a partition), it's a dialectical relationship.

Why not just say "it's a relationship"? Mind you, having had long threads on 'dialectics' before, perhaps that one's best left for another time!

Railyon

Which I think does not contradict what Arbeiten said...

Well, I think that what I've said does contradict Arbeiten's position...

LBird

Railyon

Operating on the sums level is something the neoclassical macroeconomists do.

I think you might be misunderstanding the issue here, Railyon. It's not a question of 'addition' or 'sums', but that the 'sum' is greater than the 'parts': in other words, the 'whole' is more than its 'contituents'.

Mmh, well for me when I think of sum I think of the mathematical concept like one is taught in school. There, a sum can't be anything else than the addition of its parts (numbers) and consequently not be any less or more than that.

LBird

Railyon

Well yes, but then it's not a pure addition of parts to a sum (like in a partition), it's a dialectical relationship.

Why not just say "it's a relationship"? Mind you, having had long threads on 'dialectics' before, perhaps that one's best left for another time!

I guess so. In my conception of dialectics all social relationships are dialectical (I restrict dialectics to the social realm and not to nature or matter itself like Engels and Lenin but I guess that's another issue altogether) but I used the word as some sort of qualifier to get across what I mean (or not since dialectics seem to be a giant black box and subject to all kinds of mystifications and misunderstandings apparently)

LBird

Well, I think that what I've said does contradict Arbeiten's position...

Then I have no idea what you two are talking about and I'd best subtract myself from the sum! :P

Ah, bourgeois mathematics with its undialectical concept of sum!

jura

Ah, bourgeois mathematics with its undialectical concept of sum!

Oh, come on! :P I never said it's bollocks altogether... it's all in how you use it.

LBird

Railyon

Well yes, but then it's not a pure addition of parts to a sum (like in a partition), it's a dialectical relationship.

Why not just say "it's a relationship"? Mind you, having had long threads on 'dialectics' before, perhaps that one's best left for another time!

Railyon

Which I think does not contradict what Arbeiten said...

Well, I think that what I've said does contradict Arbeiten's position...

Further clarification, a, this doesn't 'contradict' [sic] what I have been saying (I have quite clearly mentioned a feedback between wholes and parts which change the nature of both) and b, I don't have a position on this per se. It is an on going problematic that I wouldn't dare to say I have fully worked out yet. To bring this back to the thread, I didn't just to say 'hey Apple, I know the meaning of X, Y, Z'. I offered some bodies of thought which Apple can grapple with. After all, it was a recommended reading thread :-D !!

Railyon

Mmh, well for me when I think of sum I think of the mathematical concept like one is taught in school. There, a sum can't be anything else than the addition of its parts (numbers) and consequently not be any less or more than that.

Perhaps you remember another analogy I used on another thread, about '50 lego bricks'?

Your position, going by the above, is that '50 lego bricks is always 50 lego bricks, no more'.

But what if I construct a car from those 50 bricks? And then break up the car and construct a plane?

I'd argue that the former is more than 50 lego bricks, it's a car; and the latter, in the same way, is more than 50 lego bricks, it's a plane.

Mere addition, 'a sum can't be anything else than the addition of its parts ' can't show qualitative change, from parts to car to parts to plane.

Both cars and planes are the sum of their parts, but also have emergent properties not present in their components (road travel and flight). It'd be like looking for 'speed' in the Spirit of Ecstacy on the bonnet of a Roller, because the Roller is 'no more than its components', so speed must be in one of them!

Railyon

I restrict dialectics to the social realm and not to nature or matter itself

So do I, mate!

Well I guess we could write this off as 'speaking past one another' as I don't actually disagree with anything you say. So I honestly don't quite know where the problem was! Maybe just my overly formulaic understanding of sum.

If ComradeAppleton was somehow magically removed (or "subtracted") from this thread, the outcome would have been qualitatively different (and/or positive).

'Dialectics' and the 'sum versus parts' dichotomy were never about mathematics, or should never have been reduced to mathematics in the first place.

By now, all of this talk about "dialectics" may have scared him away.

Good job everyone! That will show him.

Arbeiten

But humans are not trees and societies are not woods*. The feed back between wholes and parts is much more complex (and sub wholes, that makes up parts of other wholes etc, etc). 'Agency' here is unavoidable (even if it has unintended effects or, happen behind our backs, or whatever).

I couldn't agree more, Arbeiten!

But from that I don't conclude that the analogy doesn't work, but that the very complexity you rightly mention, about agency, structures, feedback and unintentional results, means that it is more likely that this way of thinking about 'humans and societies' is more useful than even for 'trees and woods'.

'Value' is like 'speed': neither are present in individual components, like commodities or car parts, but are emergent properties at the structural level.

Don't you pity ComradeAppleton, and their inability to have a conversation like this, and inability to try to understand our existence, which is necessarily social?

Arbeiten

[...]

ComradeAppleton

omen

This is very simple really. People are mostly decent and outside of war or Africa gang rape is not on anyone's to-do list.

This is absolutely despicable. Horrid little wolf in 'I'm just trying to be a simple power hating individualist' sheeps clothing. Just like Ron Paul.

[/quote]

Um, something went horribly wrong with your quoting there, accidentally attributing Appletons shitty racist quote to me! A mistake no doubt, but I thought I'd just point it out in case anyone new joins the thread and sees it.

[This thread's getting far more interesting than it deserves to be!]

Railyon

jura

Ah, bourgeois mathematics with its undialectical concept of sum!

Oh, come on! :P I never said it's bollocks altogether... it's all in how you use it.

Heh. I think the problem with the mathematics analogy, is that it is far to simple, and is comparing the basic mathematical operation of addition (x+y=z) with a complex social phenomena that can't adequately be compared.

A better analogy would be a physical system. For example, take two simple pendulums, which swing regularly and predictably, and connect one to the end of the other to make a double pendulum, and then set the pair swinging. The behaviour of the pair is anything but regular and, and exhibits chaotic motion like this:

[youtube]U39RMUzCjiU[/youtube]

With each single pendulum you can write a nice neat equation for the motion of the end, but with the double pendulum there is no equation for the motion of the ends at all, and you have to use numerical techniques and approximations to model the system on a computer. There is no possible way two add the two solutions together in a x+y=z formula (like you can do with sound waves, say). The system is also highly unpredictable. And that's a really simple system, consisting of just two things!

Physicists and applied mathematicians usually rewrite the equations for the system (which in this case are quite simple, even if the solution to them, i.e the motion, is not) in the form: "Linear differential equation" + "non-linear interaction terms" = 0, where "Linear differential equation" = 0 would be the equation for one simple pendulum (not connected to another).

So I guess to bring the analogy back to the social case, we'd have "society" = "sum of all individuals" + "interactions" (rather than, "society" = "sum of all individuals", as dopes like Appleblossom would have it). I.e. the sum really is more than the parts, and the extra part is the social interactions.

It's still only an analogy, so don't take it too seriously, though...

omen

Heh. I think the problem with the mathematics analogy, is that it is far to simple, and is comparing the basic mathematical operation of addition (x+y=z) with a complex social phenomena that can't adequately be compared.

Well, that was actually my point. ;) But that's exactly what (methodological) individualism amounts to. You'd be surprised what kinda stuff you get taught in college.

If you call his exploitative activities capitalism, then you should know that all his exploitation is facilitated by the state, not by free markets or trade.

Even a stopped clock shows the correct time to times a day. In other words: no shit Sherlock! You really think that libcommers aren't aware of the umbilical cord that still connects capital and the state? And you think this somehow is your trump card? Tsk tsk.

ComradeAppleton

LBird

You don't seem to realise that 'inequality' is a product of society, rather than a biologically fixed ration of something.

Yes, because without society we are all identical communist robots. Right. The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as equality among people. You can choose to believe this crazy and completely unreal idea, once again of christian origin, that "we are all created equal". But it's just a bunch of nonsense.

In loving tribute to omen, ComradeAppleton's understanding of Marxism:

ComradeAppleton

Yes, because without society we are all identical communist robots. Right. The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as equality among people. You can choose to believe this crazy and completely unreal idea, once again of christian origin, that "we are all created equal". But it's just a bunch of nonsense.

You’re just completely racist and ignorant. You believe certain people are “unequal” because their lazy or of the wrong qualities. We may all have our disagreements with the ideal of “equality of outcome”, but you clearly don’t seem like the type of person who believes in the ideal of “equality of opportunity”. Because in your wonderful brain, some people are born “unequal” and don’t deserve anything. They shall forever stay in their place. I don’t know what brought you here, but if you’re looking for the ‘Mein Kampf’ forum, you are in the wrong place.

ComradeAppleton

If you associate exploiters like Bill Gates and his corporation Microsoft with individualist ideas or with any philosophy I espouse, then you clearly did not understand anything I wrote about in this whole thread. If you call his exploitative activities capitalism, then you should know that all his exploitation is facilitated by the state, not by free markets or trade. Therefore as far as the state is involved in anyone's life, it is a form of exploitation.

This is exactly a clear demonstration of what’s wrong with your thinking. This is the kind stuff that comes out of Reason magazine, an anti-libertarian propertarian publication. It’s an absurd faith-based system that says: a state, by intervening in “anyone’s life”, prevents the existence of “true” capitalism or a “true” free market. Clearly, you have not read Marx’s Capital or any of his other works. As a result, you don’t understand the dynamism inherent in market relations, the process of competitive accumulation, the inevitable wage-labor and capitalism (you separate from a “true” market) or anything else that could have helped you to understand how our society came to be and operate. Your critique of society is solely centered on the “state” aspect of society, which makes your anarchism nothing but misguided anarchism. Your worldview, like many other propertarians (and fascists as well), makes the mistake that states precedes human beings, when the opposite is true. Human beings precedes states.

ComradeAppleton

If you associate exploiters like Bill Gates and his corporation Microsoft with individualist ideas or with any philosophy I espouse, then you clearly did not understand anything I wrote about in this whole thread.

No, I see now! Bill Gates, Microsoft and the state have nothing to do with propagating 'individualist' myths amongst their worker-citizens, whilst they stand (merely coincidentally) united in their exploitation and oppression, and 'individualist' philosophy is not bourgeois brainwashing designed to divide worker-citizens from each other, but the product of transhistoric, asocial geniuses, like you, ComradeAppleton!

Oh, Timeless One, how I long for your clarity!

Or, perhaps you're the one who does not 'not understand anything [you] wrote about in this whole thread'.

You'll be giving half-wits a bad name if you keep this nonsense up. Hasn't it dawned on you yet that you're the one who is 'unequal' to this debate, and it's nothing biological in you, but the fact the you've chosen to listen, for far too long, to horseshit without questioning it?

Why not try critical thinking, just for a change? And stop acting like a childish bourgeois robot? You have got a mind, if you give it half a chance, mate.

ComradeAppleton

LBird

You don't seem to realise that 'inequality' is a product of society, rather than a biologically fixed ration of something.

Yes, because without society we are all identical communist robots.

this a really weird thing to say to people why have being telling you no one can exist outside of society.

ComradeAppleton

Right. The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as equality among people. You can choose to believe this crazy and completely unreal idea, once again of christian origin, that "we are all created equal". But it's just a bunch of nonsense.

being equal doesn't mean being identical, communism assumes that everyone is different, hence "from each according to their ability", everyone should be able to contrabut to society in the way thay are best suted to. Its capitalist ideology they everyone is the same but for difference quantity of worth/ability/work ethic

Railyon

omen

Heh. I think the problem with the mathematics analogy, is that it is far to simple, and is comparing the basic mathematical operation of addition (x+y=z) with a complex social phenomena that can't adequately be compared.

Well, that was actually my point. ;) But that's exactly what (methodological) individualism amounts to. You'd be surprised what kinda stuff you get taught in college.

Yeah, my post wasn't specifically aimed at yours, I just used it as an excuse to throw some ideas out there (the physical system analogy). I kinda rushed the last bit, though, as I suddenly realized I was late for something, so I think that needs some rethinking on my part...

ComradeAppleton

If you associate exploiters like Bill Gates and his corporation Microsoft with individualist ideas[...]

FFS, Appleton, the whole of the neoliberal economic theory, as espoused by all the think tanks funded by big corporations like Microsoft, and their lobbyists, and all the government economics advisers, and in all the economic departments in universities across the world, is fundamentally based on the idea of the autonomous, self-interested individual, outside of society, that emerged along with capitalism during the Enlightenment. Where on Earth do you think the Adam Smith Institute (right-wing think tank) got its name from?

The fact that you espouse the small businessman, farmer, shopkeeper, self-employed person, version of this does not make you a rebel, but a tool. Conservative politicians, in fact, prefer to tout this version in public (think: Joe the Plumber), because it plays better with their core voters. They save the hardcore batshit stuff for their party fund-raisers.

That bucket of yours must be on really tight, for you not to have noticed any of this...

ComradeAppleton

omen

That bucket of yours must be on really tight, for you not to have noticed any of this...

Clearly you never understood what Proudhon meant by 'property is theft'.

And you clearly didn't even read what I wrote! I didn't even mention property, and was simply referring to your claim that Bill Gates, and other capitalists, weren't individualists, by pointing out that individualism is mainstream dominant ideology, and has been for the past few centuries. Or are you applying the No true Scotsman fallacy to Bill Gates, et al?

Wikipedia

Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the "Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again". Hamish is shocked and declares that "No Scotsman would do such a thing". The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again; and, this time, finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, "No true Scotsman would do such a thing".

As I said, bucket too tight...

Emile Armand (quoted by ComradeAppleton)

For example, anarchist communism denies, rejects and expels the State from its ideology; but it resuscitates it the moment that it substitutes social organization for personal judgment.

ComradeAppleton, can't you see that the identification of the 'state' with any form of 'social organisation' is simply historically incorrect?

'Social organisation' has always existed, and any anthropological examination of pre-state societies still existing on this planet shows that they have some form of 'social organisation'.

The notion of 'personal judgement', outside of social influences, is meaningless.

For example, your (so-called) 'personal judgement' is nothing more than the repetition of an extreme individualist ideology, as we have shown to you throughout this thread. Where do you think Armand was brought up and socialised? Mars? Armand is a social product, just like all of us.

You rightly point out that we are Communists - but do you think we dreamt it all up individually'? And purely by chance we all happen to agree? No, of course not.

Well, 'individualism' is an ideology, just like Communism. Can't you see you've chosen one ideology and we've chosen another? Both have their roots in society, not in individual thought.

To put it simply, Armand is a poorly educated fool. Why you look to him for guidance beats me, mate. Doesn't evidence and argument play any part in your outlook?

ComradeAppleton

In what way is Bill Gates an individualist anarchist?

Are you really this thick, or just playing dumb? I never said Bill Gates was a fucking anarchist, I said he was an individualist, and that individualism has been at the core of all Enlightenment thinking regarding economics, politics, and society, and is the fundamental concept which capitalists use to justify capitalist exploitation. It's not like they keep it a secret or anything, they wear it as a fucking badge!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism#Core_principles

Emile Armand

It is axiomatic that in order to grow and develop himself the fiercest Anarchist Individualist needed “society”.

But, ComradeAppleton, throughout this thread you've argued that there is no such thing as 'society'. Now, you admit that 'society' does exist, and moreover it is inescapable for the development of the 'individual'.

E A

He needed it at an age when his character had not yet affirmed itself and when he could neither reason nor draw up any kind of appreciation.

All I can say is that you still seem to be within this 'stage', as you palpably can not yet either 'reason' a meaningful case or 'appreciate' your weaknesses.

E A

Later on — the cause does not matter — he became a negator of authority and exploitation.

What's this? Magic? So this 'individualist', who has been parasitic until now upon a caring society and unable to reason or make any appreciation, suddenly 'negates', without explained cause, the very thing that has formed the 'individual'?

Does this nonsense pass for philosophy in your neck of the woods, ComradeAppleton?

E A

Yet, because he found himself face to face with a social contract...

Not the mythical 'social contract'! FFS, Armand really is a dope! And you follow this clown?

I can't be arsed with discussing any more of this drivel, ComradeAppleton. If it satisfies you, good luck, mate.

ComradeAppleton

This is laughable. Comparing individualism with any form of statism is just pure ill-willed propaganda. Statism is a form of collectivism, imposed from above (usually via excuses like nationalism, that the 'nation' has 'self-rule' through democracy/elections).

You continue to produce distortions like a propaganda machine. Here, you reduce ‘statism’ to mean every type of organization. Well, how can we talk about anything when your political language is so reductionist? How can we, for example, refer to the ‘state’ represented in Washington, D. C. and the role it plays in the economy if everything is ‘statist’, including the structures within the economy?

ComradeAppleton

In what way is statism individualist? Individualists have historically opposed the state and violence of any kind in favour of voluntary relations. Bill Gates is a statism exploiter, one of the biggest ones in the world. His tool was not free trade or production, but threatening people with violence (the police and prison).

Notice here again you prefer to call Bill Gates a "statism" exploiter, not a capitalist exploiter. To you, he was not the product of "free trade" or "production", but the state. You continue with your one-dimensional understanding of 'society'. In your brainwashed mind, monopolies or 'capitalist exploiters' are not the products of long historical processes inherent in market mechanisms, but the products solely of state interventions. For your information, states don’t create monopolies; at most, they aid them, due to the powerful influences those same monopolies exert over state institutions. I can’t go any further because I am not an economics professor. But it’s a little curious that you would choose to ignore many aspects of our previous posts, such as the following:

Agent of the Fifth International

It’s an absurd faith-based system that says: a state, by intervening in “anyone’s life”, prevents the existence of “true” capitalism or a “true” free market. Clearly, you have not read Marx’s Capital or any of his other works. As a result, you don’t understand the dynamism inherent in market relations, the process of competitive accumulation, the inevitable wage-labor and capitalism (you separate from a “true” market) or anything else that could have helped you to understand how our society came to be and operate. Your critique of society is solely centered on the “state” aspect of society, which makes your anarchism nothing but misguided anarchism.

You’re determined to blur everything you dislike on one side, covering it up with reductionist terminologies. And you mask everything you like and desire with a uniformed pseudo-individualism. In your brainwashed mind, monopolies are accumulated through states (you actually said this), not through markets where everything is up for sale. But the reason you do this is as I explained before.

Agent of the Fifth International

But that's not the reason. The real reason is because your current outlook comes with some benefits. Your current outlook (or dogmatism), by placing itself on the basis of the supreme individual, tells you that all you have to do, is abolish everything and start over. Lets rewind the clock backwards and restart this system of oppressive exploitation. But this time, you plan to put yourself in front of the line, and grab the biggest share of whatever's there. And force under your rule a mass of wage laborers. And no one can object. It's your "property", right? It's your "work", right? No one has a "claim" on you, right? Plus, wage labor is voluntary! It seems to me, this outlook makes you feel good and right; it makes you feel as if you would not have done anything wrong in your so-called free society.

Agent of the Fifth International

Here, you reduce ‘statism’ to mean every type of organization.

I'd like to see Appleton try to explain this in his confused terminology: United States v. Microsoft.

"Um, so statists representing the state of the United States, together with statists representing twenty United States states, sued the state of Microsoft, run by the statist Bill Gates..." :confused:

He'd get himself into a terrible state...

I'd like the same explained in the vulgar marxist conception of the state being the henchman of the bourgeoisie, too. (Not really)

Railyon

I'd like the same explained in the vulgar marxist conception of the state being the henchman of the bourgeoisie, too. (Not really)

What would a vulgar Marxist conception of the state be, and a non-vulgar one? Just asking even though its not related to our discussion with ComradeSolipsism.

Agent of the Fifth International

Railyon

I'd like the same explained in the vulgar marxist conception of the state being the henchman of the bourgeoisie, too. (Not really)

What would a vulgar Marxist conception of the state be, and a non-vulgar one? Just asking even though its not related to our discussion with ComradeSolipsism.

Well the vulgar conception is that the state is some kind of agent of capital, mindlessly following its orders (in a rather mystical way) and would never do anything to stand in its way (culminating in a theory of state monopoly capitalism which was kinda big until the 70s or so).

The non-vulgar conception is that it's not as easy as that. While the state upholds and defends class divisions (via property rights for example) and the reproduction of the capital relation and thus capital itself, there is no directly conscious agency. Its raison detre is to keep the system running (by introducing social reforms or defending competition for example) but this is not done consciously, it's a structural necessity of class society. This may well end in actions 'hurting' certain capitals like in the MS case but that's only done in order to preserve the reproduction of capital on a social scale (and/or to fit a certain ideological framework though usually the ideology changes according to the needs of capital not the other way around). One could go on about that but I had a beer too many. So this could also be a pretty vulgar conception but you get the idea.

For once, a response of sense and clarity!

Thanks.

It's rather difficult to argue with people who think that every non-communist is a capitalist... as most of you seem to be suggesting.

CA: So what's this anarchist communism about then?

LibCom: Well it's a society based on collective ownership and free cooperation in production...

CA: So it's not like individualist anarchism then?

LibCom: Well, no not really.

CA: So it's JUST EXACTLY THE SAME AS STATISM?

LibCom: No, not really. In fact individualist ideology is a common feature of modern capitalist states.

CA: WELL THAT'S NO WAY TO CARRY ON AN ARGUMENT!

~J.

ComradeAppleton

You didn't understand that society, in the eyes of the individualist, is just the rabble.

PROTIP: people disagreeing with you doesn't mean they don't understand you.

Nobody is suggesting that all non-commies are capitalists. That would be silly. A capitalist is a representative of capital; someone who buys labour power and advances money with the intent of enriching it by putting labour to work.

ComradeAppleton

It's rather difficult to argue with people who think that every non-communist is a capitalist... as most of you seem to be suggesting.

Edith Sitwell

I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it.

Michel de Montaigne

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

ComradeAppleton

Wow, that is a real jumble.

:roll:

So anyway, I have this new theory that Comrade Appleton is a rudimentary chatbot deployed here by the Adam Smith Institute, in a cunning attempt to distract us, thus thwarting the Worldwide Communist Revolution. Come on, it's obvious, isn't it?

ComradeAppleton

I only have my body and my mental capacity.

Well, one out of two ain't bad, I suppose...

omen

So anyway, I have this new theory that Comrade Appleton is a rudimentary chatbot deployed here by the Adam Smith Institute, in a cunning attempt to distract us, thus thwarting the Worldwide Communist Revolution. Come on, it's obvious, isn't it?

That's what I thought initially. But based on what he just explained above, he's just trying to find a way to keep himself productive. After all, he considers himself a form of 'capital'. And he doesn't want to lay himself idle in his backyard. So he's willing to sell himself in the marketplace like a prostitute; "capitalizing" on his body and so-called mental capacity. I guess exploitation, in this case, is "fair" since the exploited is consciously willing to be subjected to an exploiter.

Agent of the Fifth International

I guess exploitation, in this case, is "fair" since the exploited is consciously willing to be subjected to an exploiter.

If this is the case, I'm sure our dear Generalissimo Appleton will soon explain whether it is or it isn't (as he loves monologues), he will have placed himself to the right of Murray Rothbard* and that is some crazy stuff. I mean, if your ideology is right-wing when compared to an "anarcho"-capitalist, that's just coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs.

-------------------------
*Wiki cites "The Essential Rothbard" for the claim that he didn't think it was ethical to contract yourself into slavery, which can be arrived at by implication from the position you described.

The very possibility of 'rightful slavery' one can derive from self-ownership is nuts on its own.

Going by current statistics a ton of people would have sold themselves out to slavery if this were in place and it would be A-OK!

Doesn't answer the question why they needed to do that in the first place... oh right, misinvestment of human capital.

Class society is bad enough already, why make it worse?

ComradeAppleton

To clear up all the confusion, I like Benjamin Tucker's definition of government:

As someone said earlier: don't mistake disagreement for misunderstanding. We just don't accept your definition of state because it's way too broad and wishy-washy, and, amongst other things, it would make Josef Fritzl a state, which is just mental! I mean, he doesn't even have a flag, or anything...

ComradeAppleton

So I think you have finally reached the crux of this issue - our definitions and expectations are just totally incompatible

I thought you'd reached this conclusion yourself about thirteen pages ago. So what exactly keeps you coming back here for yet another drubbing?

ComradeAppleton

It's not about me getting a "drubbing", it's about finding out how far you are willing to go with this nonsense about democracy being compatible with freedom or about democracy not being a system of statism.

!

CA do you mistake democracy for its current political form, i.e. representation?

On that you're correct. But that still leaves what the heck you consider as democracy. But then again with your jihadi solipsism I guess anything that is decided by more people than yourself is authoritarian...

Khawaga

CA do you mistake democracy for its current political form, i.e. representation?

Damnit Khawaga! ;) I was trying to test my theory that Appleton just has to have the last say, by tricking him into posting a damning riposte to my single exclamation mark reply. Now you've ruined all my fun... :cry:

ComradeAppleton

I just want to make it clear that I do not oppose democracy, or any other system for that matter, from an a priori position. As long as it's voluntary and everyone agrees to participate, any system is fine by me. I don't want to meddle in other people's affairs as long as they don't meddle in mine.

Oh, I get it. As long as nobody questions or tampers with your dictatorship. Got it. We can all give this thread a rest now. There's no more clearing up to do.

More capers and mayhem:

Owner of the 'Plot of Land' Enterprise, ComradeAppleton

Look, I have treated you quite well; so stop complaining. If I can remind you, this is a voluntary relationship.

Immigrant Worker

But mister, you don't pay well. It barely covers my food and housing costs. I may eventually be kicked out into the streets if I can't cover my rent.

Owner of the 'Plot of Land' Enterprise, ComradeAppleton

And? Do I look like I care? If you want to cover your expenses, you should try working longer and harder, instead of interrupting me while I'm busy debating these statists, who are all over the place like vultures, peering into my window, trying to take product.

Immigrant Worker

But this is no voluntary relationship. There's no where else to go. You own almost everything. There's no where else to make money other than being employed by you.

Owner of the 'Plot of Land' Enterprise, ComradeAppleton

Your wrong about that. Just look at reality. There's lots of workers out there making products and making money; if they can, so can you. Look, I'm always right and your wrong. Haven't you read the text to the official enterprise ideology I established here, Smithian-Randianism? It says your free, so deal with it, if you can't handle freedom.

Immigrant Worker

Well, me and my friends may join together to revolt and takeover your enterprise!

Owner of the 'Plot of Land' Enterprise, ComradeAppleton

Darn it. You want food, go get a job! ........Oh wait, you work for me. Well go back to work, and don't threaten to touch my product. Or else, I'll get my private security force on your ass. Every stretch of time that's wasted gives more time to my statist competitors to gain an advantage on me. Before you go, what is it that you do again?

Immigrant Worker

Make your product.

Owner of the 'Plot of Land' Enterprise, ComradeAppleton

What? You touch my product? Your one of them damn statists.

ComradeAppleton pulls out a rifle and kills the poor immigrant worker with a single shot to the head.

Owner of the 'Plot of Land' Enterprise, ComradeAppleton

As for them other statists you were planning to revolutionize with, I thought my racism kept you guys apart and separated. Oh well. I'll take care of them damn statists, muuuy haaa haa *cough* ha ha oo oo lla la ha ha!

Three weeks later, as a result of his growing solipsism, ComradeAppleton is hiding in his closet, scared shivering, with his rifle close to his chest, and the 'Free Market' bible in his coat pocket.

Owner of the 'Plot of Land' Enterprise, ComradeAppleton

Oh man. I can't go back out there. I can't tell which one of them is either a statist or an actual worker, entrepreneur, the government, my parent, brother, and sister, a neighbor, a friend, the guy on TV, the individual, or whoever. This whole place is going rock bottom. Its like war out there. Oh, Jesus! Save me! Damn, I can't believe I said the name of the statist Jesus.

So CA, you actually support workers expropriating the property of capitalists? That's great! Workers have the right to the fruits of their labour means that wage-labour is impossible btw. No room for capitalists anymore. I am glad that you've finally come to your senses.

Ah, I forgot that you still live in the 17th century. My bad.

Awwwww, that's such a nice sentiment. One big happy Kelly-family!

But that's what you do!

The Adam Smith Institute held a prestigious ceremony in celebration of ComradeAppleton's lifelong dedication to fighting statists and upholding liberty. Upon receiving his trophy, he gave a speech to an inspired crowd.

ComradeAppleton

I have been killing statists throughout my whole life. I breath statists. I hear statists. I see statists everywhere. And I see it as my duty to kill statists. I know it can be hard sometimes. Personally, it can get a bit tragic. Like one time, I had to kill my future wife. One day, she came home from work extremely upset. I asked, 'what's wrong'. She said, 'my boss is hitting on me and it's getting a bit inappropriate'. I rightfully responded, 'your his "capital", and he can capitalize on you in whatever productive way he sees fit'. She went on about how nuts I was for saying such things. I grew suspicious of her. I asked her, 'do you object to my fellow entrepreneur using his own 'capital' in whatever way he likes?' Her answer proved my suspicion when she said yes. I told her, 'then you’re a STATE!' and I finished her off with my rifle.

ComradeAppleton was then interrupted by a sir sitting in the top-left balcony. It was Murray Rothbard and he yelled out:

Murray Rothbard

Man, you are nuts! You’re to the right my position. And nobody is supposed to be the right of my position. You’re crazy man.

Some people in the crowd agreed and started to make a frenzy. ComradeAppleton fired back:

ComradeAppleton

Shut up! Do you know how hard it is to fight statists?

ComradeAppleton then froze stiff as his imagination took over him. He was caught up in the memory of the time he fought off statists invading his enterprise, which can be seen in the link below (except he didn’t die, so excuse the ending).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6L8NFcMakk

He regained himself and continued speaking.

ComradeAppleton

I fought those statists. They were coming in from all directions. I yelled at them ‘you want a piece of my property? OK. Say hello to my little property!’ And I fired at them, BANG BANG! They were immigrants, too. And I stood up to them. How dare they come to take our jobs and claim our product?

And the audience overwhelmingly cheered in approval, including Murray Rothbard. They were moved by his passion for freedom. His words would be the inspiration for much activism on the right for years to come.

ComradeAppleton

I really don't see how you find this at all applicable to me or amusing... I am a pacifist, so killing isn't anywhere in my scope of actions. You are the one who introduced that theme at all to this conversation.

ComradeAppleton

The worker owns the product of his/her labour. If you want to confiscate it or collectivise it, then sure I fully support his/her right to kill you. That's not murder, it's self-defense.

That's settled then: CA advocates genocide of all those who disagree with him? That's pretty low CA. You can't go around committing genocide willy nilly.

So Comrade Appleton, can I just see if I've got this straight? I find it helps me if I use examples, so here goes:

Scenario #1

A man owns a house with a garden that contains some apple trees. He works hard all year round tending to the trees, or whatever, and when autumn comes he's got a ripe crop of apples reader to be picked. One day he takes a stroll in his garden and finds a young girl has snuck onto his property, uninvited, and has picket an apple which she has just taken a bite out of. From looking at her emaciated body, he can tell she is clearly starving and close to death. When she sees that he has seen her, she immediately bursts into tears and apologises, saying that she has not eaten in weeks. In response, the man breaks her neck with his bare hands.

So, in the above situation, the man who owns the apples is clearly in the right. Here, I'm going by your statement to the effect that "The worker owns the product of his/her labour. If you want to confiscate it or collectivise it, then sure I fully support his/her right to kill you. That's not murder, it's self-defense." The starving child in this case is essentially the same as Stalin or Hitler, in that they are doing something coercive, and are therefore the state.

Scenario #2

I have baked a yummy chocolate cake and left it on the kitchen counter-top to cool. My housemate, Bill, walks in and sees the cake. "May I please have a slice of cake Jo?" he asks. "Why yes of course you may!" I respond, "here, let me cut us both a slice." We sit down to enjoy our cake and a moment later our third housemate, Emma, walks in. "Oooh, goody, cake!" she exclaims, and without asking goes on to cut herself a slice of cake. I take her outside, douse her in petrol and set her on fire.

Again, my understanding here is that - as Emma has tried to confiscate the fruits of my labour (in this case a slice of cake, but that, as I understand it, is irrelevant to the broader issue at hand) - that I am well within my rights to kill her. After all she has coerced me, and I am only acting in self defence.

Scenario #3

A Mr Borj Wazzee acquires a chemical works through free exchange with the people who constructed it. He enters into a contractual relationship with several individuals to assist him in carrying out the daily running of the factory. According to the terms of this agreement he is tasked with the administrative side of things, sitting in an office for a few hours each day and overseeing the running of the plant. Everyone else gets to work 12 hour shifts 6 days a week in sweltering heat, while inhaling the noxious fumes given off by the chemical works.

After some time the other workers in the factory become sick from the fumes given off by the plant. They discuss it amongst themselves, and one of their number decides to go and talk to their employer about their plight. "Mr Wazzee," he says, "these chemical fumes are making us really ill - could we please have some safety equipment?"

Borj turns the question over in his head for a moment. "I should say... not!" he exclaims, and chortles at his own joke. "Now run along will you, I have managerial duties to attend to."

The very next day, his entire workforce turns up at his office at 9 am, just when they should have started work (according to the free and fair contract that they had all agreed to). Their families were there too, and their friends and loved ones. He was pretty shocked, but he was still more gobsmacked when the assembled crowd produced a spokesperson, the very same worker from the day before, who announced that the workers were stopping work until he provided them with the safety equipment they required. The assembled crowd loudly voiced their support for this proposal.

Whereupon Borj entered into a free and consensual arrangement with a second group of people. This second group acquired a collection of knives, clubs, and automatic weapons, who went round to the striking workers houses as they slept, and killed them in their beds, along with their families, and their friends and loved ones, and anyone else who had aided and abetted them in their action.

Here, applying the same logic as above, I am assuming that Borj is in the right (defending his property and his contractual rights against an attempt to force a - limited - collectivism upon him) and the workers and their allies are acting as the state. How fortunate it is for Mr Wazzee that he had the means to secure a second contract to defend his rights!

~J.

The third scenario needed an illustration, I think:

I found everything he wrote in that second thread he made every bit as dishonest as he was in this thread.

ComradeAppleton

So I've been thinking - what are the real differences between mutualism and libertarian communism? I mean in theory there seems to be a gulf between them, but in practice I think there really isn't............but I think that this is really a matter of theory. In terms of practical approaches it doesn't seem like it would be a problem for me to live in a communist world.

Yeah, after going around in circles 477 times over terminologies, you really get it now. Your no longer dreaming. Your sincere about giving up your desire for your own dictatorship.

In theory, he says its the worst thing ever, far worse then Hitler and Stalin. It makes him willing to shoot somebody. But in practice, he can handle it. No problem. In fact, it will be his pleasure.

Agent of the Fifth International

In theory, he says its the worst thing ever, far worse then Hitler and Stalin. It makes him willing to shoot somebody. But in practice, he can handle it. No problem. In fact, it will be his pleasure.

Yes, to Appleton, communism is like the television show Friends.

Looks like he's bogged off for now. I was thinking of posting a picture of a tumbleweed to that other thread he started, asking for new reading recommendations (and after he ignored the ones given at the start of this thread, I can't imagine why his new thread didn't prove very popular) but decided to let it die in peace.

Also, maybe I've been watching far too many episodes of Columbo, but that recent short-lived "market economy?" thread in the theory forum got my spidey-sense tingling:

Maybe I'm wide of the mark, but it looked awfully suspicious to me. (The OP signed up, posted a drive by thread about a topic close to CA's heart, and never returned.)