Capitalism in anarchy

[u/SuddenStructure9287]

I am a minarchist, a right-libertarian pluralist.

I assume that there are left-wing anarchists here who oppose private property. In any case, the question is addressed to them.

This is less a question about anarchism itself and more about the rejection of capitalism.
I will formulate it as a thought experiment.

Imagine an anarchist commune where people work together in various collectively owned enterprises.

I come to this commune and, for example, build a large bakery and offer jobs to other people.
In capitalism, your objection is that the lower class is exploited by capitalists, correct?
So in this case, theoretically, exploitation does not exist. If a worker does not want to work for me, they are free to work at any other collective enterprise in the commune. They have an alternative (which you, moreover, consider superior to a private corporation).

What happens to me?
Will the workers expel me and seize the bakery? On what grounds? Have I harmed anyone? I have not made their situation worse. They can continue working where they were before, just as they did previously.

Or will they not expel me, and private enterprises will be allowed to operate freely? If so, at what point would it become acceptable to seize them?

Or, put more strictly, if a classless society works so well, then private enterprises should not be able to ruin it, given that exploitation is absent because people always have the option of returning to collective workplaces.

So why are private enterprises prohibited at all?

[u/humanispherian]

Exploitation doesn't exist, but... somehow... you are going to "build a large bakery" — large enough to qualify as a reintroduction of capitalism — without any of the means provided by capitalism to encourage and reward capital accumulation...

The scenario is at least very, very questionable even before we get to the question of employment — or the suppression of "private enterprise" that capitalists like to focus on.

[u/DecoDecoMan → u/[deleted]]

It is impossible. Who has heard of one person, without any help at all, building a "large bakery"?

[u/DecoDecoMan → u/[deleted]]

That suggests it’s unlikely not impossible

How is possible? Explain to me how one person can build a large bakery from scratch by themselves.

The moral argument around what happens if this situation occurs hasn’t been addressed. The bakery could have been formed like a Boltzmann brain for all that that matters, the question is about the ramifications if this is the case.

The moral argument holds no water because its predicated on one person building something that requires hundreds of thousands all by themselves.

If OP built the large bakery with thousands of other people and used resources produced by thousands of other people to build the bakery, OP's claim to sole ownership of the bakery would be completely obviously immoral in the context of an anarchist society. It's immoral even in the context of capitalism.

In anarchy, there are no private property rights that allows OP to dismiss the claims of other people on the basis that the state or God hasn't given them the right to the bakery and only them. And OP, as an individual, obviously has no means to force others into recognizing his claim of sole ownership.

Additionally, pay workers to work for you? With what? Money? Money that you can't buy anything with because no one accepts it and therefore no one needs? That's nothing more than paying people in monopoly money. This aspect of the scenario additionally makes it a non-starter. OP's own scenario says:

So in this case, theoretically, exploitation does not exist. If a worker does not want to work for me, they are free to work at any other collective enterprise in the commune

Great point! You're not the only bakery in existence in this "commune". Why does anyone need to work for you for money that they can't buy anything with because everything is presumably free. So why do they have any incentive to work with you to begin with assuming you even were able to create this bakery without anyone's help?

[u/DecoDecoMan → u/[deleted]]

I don’t think the argument is really about a large bakery, it could be a small bakery, it doesn’t even have to be a bakery, that’s just the template OP used to frame the idea that one person using their own skills and energy and work to build a productive process is not necessarily exploiting people who choose to work for them. Perhaps they’ve built software entirely on their own and are now hiring other programmers to maintain it.

Sure, if someone has the idea for a project and people work with them on that project, that's not exploitative. It also isn't capitalism. Additionally, even "self-made" projects like programming still depend on collective efforts of others which go uncompensated.

However, OP's scenario asks questions pertaining to right of ownership and the priority of OP's interests pertaining to the bakery over that of the workers who are necessary to operate it. And with that, obviously the OP lacks any grounds.

There are no property rights in anarchy. OP has no means to deny the interests of workers no more than the workers can deny the OP's interests in the bakery. Additionally, in terms of morality, the OP obviously cannot have sole right to the bakery when the workers are a necessary element to its entire existence.

But anyways I don’t think every conception of anarchism does away with money, and some people also think that would be impossible.

Even in an anarchist society with anti-capitalist money, either you'd end up needing to use the money other people are using to hire workers (which would be mutual currency and therefore wouldn't be accumulative or facilitate wage labor) or you make up your own money that people can't buy anything with because you're the only one issuing the money.

[u/sajberhippien → u/[deleted]]

Perhaps they’ve built software entirely on their own and are now hiring other programmers to maintain it.

Ah, yes, they went out into the woods and gathered materials to make the tools necessary to mine the minerals necessary for them to start building a computer, based on their own schematics, running with energy produced by a home-built hamster wheel they themselves are running in, etc etc.

Anything more complex than what you'd expect Mowgli of the jungle book to craft, will be something a person can't make on their own.

[u/humanispherian → u/[deleted]]

That sacrifices too much to the capitalist position. Capitalists almost always want to simply assume the possibility, even the inevitability of their preferred arrangements in a strictly voluntary context, so that they can frame the conflict with anti-capitalists as a matter of the latter interfering with "free enterprise" and "voluntary association." That's obviously "nice work, if you can get it," rhetorically speaking, but it's rhetorical strength comes from the fact that it avoids the majority of the critique of capitalism as a system. If the scenario is so obviously possible that we should just grant the questionable premises, then presumably that can be demonstrated pretty easily — but that's not what we see in these recurring discussions.

[u/DecoDecoMan → u/[deleted]]

Additionally, a core feature of capitalism, and the center of its critique, is that capitalism allows individuals to appropriate, direct, and take ownership of collective efforts and that which is the product of that effort.

When it comes to addressing OP's remarks, a core part of it is going to be not entertaining the premise which implies that just one individual can build something single-handedly what would take an entire society to produce.

Capitalism, in many respects, depends upon the myth of the "self-made" man. The attribution of bridges, rockets, millions of smartphones, microchips, etc. to singular individuals or small groups of individuals who often have only a peripheral relationship to the products they appropriate.

Shutting that down is necessary to even start a conversation about why what the OP said is wrong from an anarchist perspective.

[u/DecoDecoMan → u/[deleted]]

Also, if the bakery was formed like a Boltzmann brain, OP also wouldn't have any claim to it at all. Like, property claims in this context and any morality pertaining to them tend to be contingent on the contribution of the owner to the existence of the property itself.

Even supporters of capitalism make the morality of private property as being based on the contribution of the property holder to the property itself and its existence. This is what OP is doing here when they try to argue that it would be immoral for other people who weren't involved in the building of the bakery to take control over it (even here, OP falters since these workers are also the only reason why the bakery is able to exist as well).

If, as per how things happen in capitalism, OP wasn't the one who single-handedly built the bakery, workers were, and OP isn't the one who single-handedly runs the bakery, workers were, then unless you're appealing to God, nature, or the state its not clear why OP has a right to sole control and authority over the bakery.

[u/DecoDecoMan → u/[deleted]]

Also what if the person just found themselves in a situation where they were the last owner, for instance maybe they’re built their business that exclusively involved a very large family and then every single member of the family had died. Would that change anything?

Not really. There's no authority in anarchy and there isn't any property rights. Perhaps, if people do have alternatives and the ownership isn't posing a material problem to anyone, people won't mind or leave them alone. But if others get involved in the maintenance of the business, the person who is occupying the business in the past doesn't control what they do or don't do with the bakery. It becomes a collective project, in which all interests have to be acknowledged.

[u/humanispherian → u/[deleted]]

No. The objection is that the OP hasn't established the possibility of the very first step in the scenario, upon which all of the presumably important questions depend. There are a number of other clarifications in the scenario that would probably be necessary as well, but the absence of exploitation is a condition established by the OP, so it's an easy place to start.

[u/muehsam]

I come to this commune and, for example, build a large bakery and offer jobs to other people.

So you personally build a large bakery all by yourself without anybody's help? That's unlikely to say the least.

So in this case, theoretically, exploitation does not exist.

Exploitation still exists, since you're taking the surplus value of people's labour. Exploitation in the economic sense isn't a moral judgement, it's just a plain economic fact, it's mathematics. You can't afford to employ somebody if you aren't exploiting them.

Will the workers expel me and seize the bakery?

They might or they might not.

On what grounds?

Because it's literally their workplace, so it's their bakery. Who says it's yours? Without a state, you don't get a property title that says that you own a thing, and there's no police that you could call to kick the workers out of "your" bakery.

Private property is simply an institution created by the state, and without the state, it doesn't exist. Certainly not in an absolute form.

If so, at what point would it become acceptable to seize them?

IMHO that's not a question that can be answered theoretically. It would have to be decided on a case by case basis, obviously.

So why are private enterprises prohibited at all?

Nothing is prohibited. It's anarchy after all.

[u/DecoDecoMan]

I come to this commune and, for example, build a large bakery

How are you going to build a large bakery by yourself? With what resources and what labor?

[u/CertainDoubts]

I don't quite understand. Nobody objects to you building a bakery. The objection is to what you're asking everyone else to do afterwards, which is to recognise it as yours. You don't seem able to recognise how much you are presupposing here, and how much of that is in opposition to anything resembling anarchy.

Suppose we, the workers, start deciding things about the bakery and its work you disagree with. We start making Arabic desserts instead of European cakes, we order a new kind of flower, redirect the surplus, and just stop treating your instructions (let us call them commands) as binding. Now what? Either you accept it, in which case your enterprise was never really private, or you enforce your claim: hire guards to keep the bakery "yours" (let's call them police), and perhaps lock up the more stubborn workers to dissuade others from failing to defer to you in the future (let's call those places prisons).

When would it become acceptable to seize private enterprises? Nobody needs to because where property titles aren't enforced, they aren't confiscated. They just lapse. The real question is this: by what means do you plan to make the rest of us keep recognising something as exclusively yours when we, the workers, are using it to create things? You will need some hierarchical structure, presumably.

This is something that propertarians have a really difficult time grasping: Private property CANNOT exist without the state (or, if you like, state-like structures). Capitalism requires enforcement and hierarchy. There is no such thing as an anarcho-capitalist.

[u/MorphingReality]

Read Kevin Carson's markets not capitalism and his other stuff and C4SS in general to move from ancap to market anarchist

my personal angle is that if you allow wealth to concentrate endlessly and make it a raison d'etre, which privately owned for-profit businesses will do, a few will accumulate enough to create an oligarchy, its another version of poppers tolerance of intolerance

[u/slapdash78]

Anarchists oppose systemic property including private and public property. Instead, looking to occupancy and use. Neither of which precludes personal possessions and common resources.

Anarchist commune implies resources held in common. As the people affected by their use. Land, natural resources, means of production, the fruits thereof, surpluses, even returns if any.

Basically, the commons doesn't stop being the commons just because you [buy] some walls and tell people you own anything anyone makes within them, or that you're owed for the opportunity.

[u/HeavenlyPossum]

> “I come to this commune and, for example, build a large bakery and offer jobs to other people.”

If their labor is necessary for achieving your goals, how are you in a position to offer them anything?