anarcho-capitalism

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 30, 2024

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 10, 2024

By MNCI Somos Tierra - La Via Campesina, March 27, 2024

Since December 10th the economic deregulation policies have hit the popular areas in Argentina. 27 million people (57.4%) are under the poverty limit, while 15% is poor. The minimum wage (USD$ 200) has been reduced 14.8% in January 2024. The crisis has been worsened by the high value of the food, which in January has risen 26%. In Argentina, 20.6% suffer from food insecurity and the consumers have paid 5.2 times more than the price paid to the producers. In addition, in a little more than two months the price of a liter of Premium gasoline has risen from $349 to $918 per liter, 163%.

The method of advancement of this anarco-capitalist far right expression tries to provoke chaos to put forward their financial agenda. Milei rules to the service of the corporations and install the debate that has put forward the boundaries of the democratic consensus and the rights conquered due to the struggle of the trade unions and social movements.

The Milei government is based on the idea that the State must disappear, reducing it to its minimum and leaving everything on part of the market. To achieve this, he supports the criminalization of the protest and the popular organization, the blind negationist of the State terrorism of the last military dictatorship, a hatred and misogynistic discourse and the economic deregulation policies.

In this sense, one of the first measures was the imposition of an Emergency Decree (DNU, in Spanish) 70/2023, published December 20th 2023, that we, the Movimiento Nacional Campesino Indigena Somos Tierra (MNCI ST) reject because of its authoritarian and anti-republican perspective, representing a great attack to the democratic institutions.

This DNU is unconstitutional and void. Because of the number of legislations that abolish, just like the changes, it must be Congress of the Nation where fundamental consensuses are discussed and achieved to represent the majority of the population. In addition, each of the points of the decree benefits a reduced group of business people that always do their business at the expense of the misery of the Argentinian people.

By Tom Sexton, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, February 19, 2024

By Clara Marticorena and Julia Soul - Labor Notes, February 26, 2024

More than 1.5 million people took part in a general strike in Argentina on January 24 against a new president and his aggressive anti-union “reforms.”

Self-described “liberal-libertarian” Javier Milei, who won the November 22 presidential elections, is an economist who became popular as a panelist on a TV show. He advocated for ending the “privileges” of the “casta”—defined as corrupt politicians and social and union leaders taking advantage of “good people.”

With a new party, Freedom Advances (La Libertad Avanza), Milei won the votes of a range of people, from working-class people disappointed and angry with the incumbent Peronist government to the middle and ruling classes opposed to state intervention in the economy and income distribution.

His government’s new austerity program has already dealt a heavy blow to the pockets of working people. Days after he took office, Milei froze public workers’ wages, social assistance programs, and pensions, imposed a 118 percent devaluation of the Argentine peso, and increased tariffs for energy, public transport, and public services.

Real wages have plummeted nearly 15 percent. The government has also cut off food supplies to a lot of community organizations running “comedores comunitarios”: places where the unemployed and poor families can get some meals.

It seems that, for La Libertad Avanza, “the casta” is the working class and the poorest people, and its “privileges” are in fact labor and social rights.

By Bruno DeBrusen, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, February 8, 2024

By Geoff R - Ideas and Action, October 4, 2017

Libertarian socialists’ political goals are both radical and ambitious: we seek to replace capitalism in its entirety with libertarian socialism. As a result, libertarian socialists do not just stand against capitalism as it exists today but also against positions in favor of increasing liberalism of markets; positions to reduce regulation of markets by external actors, including the government. This is largely because there is more evidence that increased market liberalism worsens problems of markets rather than improving or resolving them.

A fundamental promise of free market liberalism is that market share becomes more equitable among competing firms due to increased competition. This means firms are both created and go out of business at a higher rate than that which currently exists. Assuming this is true, it would mean that both employers and workers would face extreme economic uncertainty and therefore have trouble planning economically for the future. It’d be harder for workers to plan personal economic decisions and harder for employers to make business decisions regarding their firms. Meeting the demand economic actors have for stability is one of the many areas where markets particularly fail.

But this argument – that market share would be more equitable among competing firms due to increased competition – lacks evidence. All firms seek to increase their market share to compete and often firms end up dominating and even monopolizing markets simply by buying up their competition. Early industrialists in the U.S. were known for doing this and that was a time where there was far less regulation in markets by the government than there is today.

Early American industrialism is also known for company towns where one company owned nearly everything; from stores to housing to the local government. As a result, all law and public policy in these towns was solely for the benefit of the employer and kept the rest of the town under complete subjugation. Such was famously the case in West Virginia, the site of the mine wars including the Battle of Blair Mountain which was the largest insurrection in the United States since the American Civil War.

By Paul Street - CounterPunch, February 28, 2017

In classic capitalist fantasy, the “private” marketplace is a land of liberty and the state is a dungeon of oppression.  Modern social democrats have tended to invert the formula, upholding the state as a force for social protection against the tyranny of the capitalist market.

The truth is more complex than either narrative allows. As Marxists and other leftists have long known, “free market” relations and the state combine to impose class oppression on the working-class majority under capitalism.  Both the market and the state are under the interrelated and overlapping, mutually reinforcing control of capital. This is especially true in the United States, where government’s social-democratic functions – and the popular movements that have historically fought to install those functions – are much weaker than they are than in other “developed” capitalist nations.

The common worker and citizen faces a double whammy under the U.S. profit system. She must rent out her critical life energy – her labor power – and subject herself to the despotic, exploitative (surplus value-extracting) direction of “free” market-ruling capital to obtain the means of exchange required to obtain basic life necessities sold on the market by capital. To make matters worse, she must contend with a government that functions not so much to protect her and the broader community from capital (including capital as employer) as to deepen capital’s political, social, and market power over and against her, other workers, and the common good.

By Paul Street - CounterPunch, February 28, 2017

In classic capitalist fantasy, the “private” marketplace is a land of liberty and the state is a dungeon of oppression.  Modern social democrats have tended to invert the formula, upholding the state as a force for social protection against the tyranny of the capitalist market.

The truth is more complex than either narrative allows. As Marxists and other leftists have long known, “free market” relations and the state combine to impose class oppression on the working-class majority under capitalism.  Both the market and the state are under the interrelated and overlapping, mutually reinforcing control of capital. This is especially true in the United States, where government’s social-democratic functions – and the popular movements that have historically fought to install those functions – are much weaker than they are than in other “developed” capitalist nations.

The common worker and citizen faces a double whammy under the U.S. profit system. She must rent out her critical life energy – her labor power – and subject herself to the despotic, exploitative (surplus value-extracting) direction of “free” market-ruling capital to obtain the means of exchange required to obtain basic life necessities sold on the market by capital. To make matters worse, she must contend with a government that functions not so much to protect her and the broader community from capital (including capital as employer) as to deepen capital’s political, social, and market power over and against her, other workers, and the common good.

By A S Goldstein - Tools of Control, December 14, 2015

Lately, I have been having endlessly frustrating debates with people who call themselves “anarcho-capitalists” or “ancaps” and who seem to be stuck in the McCarthy Era as they still view socialism as some kind of “Red Terror.” Ironically, these people are about as fervent in their support of capitalism and their hatred of socialism as the very government they supposedly want to destroy. These debates generally devolve into ad hominem attacks as the people arguing for capitalism tend to lose their cool rather quickly, and like most people they do not want to hear opposing opinions, especially ones supported by facts. I strongly believe in anarchism and autonomy as I believe they are the only foundations for a truly free society, so I have joined many anarchist groups, but it seems like many of the them (in America anyway) are overrun by so-called “ancaps,” which is why I end up having these silly arguments, and it is sad because they don’t understand “anarcho-capitalism” is an oxymoron or a contradiction of terms that are diametrically opposed. People who believe in this contradiction of terms do not understand what anarchism or capitalism is, and so I hope they read this explanation and do their own research, (and read authors that do not just reinforce their own opinions) instead of reacting defensively or reflexively.

Anarchy means a system without rulers. The etymology of the word demonstrates that as its root Greek words are “an” and “arkhos”, which together mean “without ruler.” Yet capitalism inherently has rulers. It puts people with massive capital and monopolies on resources at a much greater advantage over people who don’t have such capital or resources. The super rich also rely on state thugs and governments and their monopoly on violence and force to protect them. In a world without violent governments or police without the ability to use force, there would be no billionaires. Without police and governments that protect the rich and powerful, there is no way common people would allow a handful of incredibly greedy, misanthropic individuals to hoard billions while 80% of the world lives on less than $10 a day. Capitalist managers rely on cops to break worker strikes and quell worker dissent, they rely on state armies to secure resources, and they rely on government subsidies, tax breaks, bailouts, and bribes to politicians and judges for legislation that favors them.

“Ancaps” remind me of these Ron Paul “libertarians” who misunderstand libertarianism and anarchy as meaning a system with no rules where they think their freedom is defined by how much they can hoard and how much they can disregard other people’s rights and freedoms. But our freedom is not defined by how much we can take away the freedom of others. That is a zero sum equation (as is capitalism) and not true freedom. In this system, one person’s loss is always another person’s gain. For example, the loss of someone’s house due to foreclosure is a gain for the bank that lent the homeowner money, and it is also a gain for the person who buys the property from the bank because banks generally sell foreclosed homes for less than they are worth. We are not truly free unless everyone is free. As Martin Luther King said, “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”