to do list

envision : nap : whisper : laugh : caress : sing : love : consider : hug : create : wonder
but above all
—dance

Traveling Hopefully

"Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."

-Arundhati Roy


Friday, October 23, 2009

Daniel Parker's Reply to Free Market Anarchism and Private Property

(Editorial note: This was a response by Daniel Parker to an individual. I've generalized the comment. --Cat)

I'm an anarchist and I completely disagree with this...conception of private property or of reality for that matter. I think [it] conflates private property with possession. I don't think [this perspective recognizes] the fact that private property means 'ownership' over stuff the owner cannot use to the extent that owners become a class by the monopolization of the means of production and this scarcity induces people to become wage slaves, simply because there is no place left for them to go. The Earth is finite and so are its natural resources - considering that we all depend on it for life, that we have all become wage slaves, and that we are all subjected to the consequences of decisions we didn't make but were made for us by hierarchies of bosses, owners, and politicians. It would appear to me that not only should the people affected by decisions be the ones making them, but that the people producing and servicing should be the ones defining the terms of these activities.

I honestly am appalled at the notion that market forces are acceptable for anti-authoritarians and anti-statists to base economic models on.

Even in social anarchism, a person has a right to possession and free association. How agorists, mutualists, capitalists, and other marketeers could ever misconceive of social anarchism to be authoritarian is beyond me - however I have tried sincerely many times to understand it.

Maybe propertarians and marketeers will snort at me, "But no one forces you to work for them!". Well, except for the case of private prisons or other forms of slavery, sure. I'll concede that. But generally you do have to work for someone. And that's what propertarians always like to gloss over, seemingly unaware of the monopolization of productive resources which induces people to submit to wage slavery and the resulting plunder and destruction of natural resources.

If anything, I consider them only to be concerned about the right to make a profit. Profit, of which the fact eludes them that it is distinct and generally disconnected from the cost of production, is something which people historically have gone to great lengths to protect, even using violence, deception, and certain other forms of general malevolence and ill will...(including the creation of states--if I may add. --Cat)

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