Anarchy could never work.

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Yes it becomes an addiction for some.

Yep. Shared property is not excluded from the current system, it is just hindered by many factors. Removing those factors would let shared property develop. But why would we be obliged to be part of a shared property ? Free association is not the obligation of association.


The fact the free enterprise need to be realized by a capitalist society is not part of human nature, but the fact the some people want to realized things without having to answer why at each step, yes I think it's part of human nature. By forcing association, you remove that right.


Once again, capitalism is not the contrary of shared property. We can have many types of property : not shared, shared by some, shared by many, shared by the nation, shared by the earth.


Not only. There are intellectuals who build theories and work on propaganda so that people follow government decisions. This is an intellectual power, which has replaced more physical power like in a dictatorship.

I've read some of it.

Well I agree that property is not a mathematical reality. It is a practical one. That's why we can't rely on pure money computing and that we need regulations. Nevertheless, even if property is an approximation, it is a very good and practical one.

Imagine someone comes with a bike. You will assume that it is his bike, or at least that the owner has lended it. So you consider that the person has the responsability of it. You will not ask for each decision that the person do about this bike. It's quite the same with a company. You have machine, ok it is yours, you have the responsibility of it.

But on the other side, even if you legally get things, and without cheating become rich with it, there is some limit that must be defined to what you can have, because even if you're not cheating, if you have got too much, it is a problem for other people. So you cannot have that legitimacy even in the best case, because it's no more about controlling your things, but about controlling everything.

So using intellectual abilities for evil basically, glad I don't use my brain that way.

Problem is we cannot leave a society. We can leave a corporation or an association, but not the society.


The right to have your own things, to go buy or exchange with other things you need etc. without having to ask the whole society if everybody agrees.


Well anyone who is influencial, well-known has an intellectual power, good or bad.

Heh... you and me both.

Humans are animals. Animals compete. It is in the nature of humans and animals to compete. Thus, free enterprise is the encouragement of human nature.

Ah so its the well known part that keeps me from having any intellectual power.......though I think lack of money might play a role as well.

Not to ignore your item by item reply but to avoid reinventing the wheel or saying on repeat what you figure I'd already say I think its better to get to the core of the matter here.

My problem with blaming it on capitalism is looking at not only animals but looking at human beings through history. There were perhaps a couple billion years of hominids, a few hundred thousand years of early humans as cave dwellers, perhaps twelve or fifteen thousand years between the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, kingdoms to feudalism to mercantilism, the industrial revolution, and everything we're more intimately aware of beyond that. It doesn't seem like anywhere along this track that we haven't been what we are. I'm aware that some people will tell me that all along that track we had scarcity, that scarcity was the problem, and that capitalism then becomes the problem when we are without scarcity. The problem with an anarcho-communist or libertarian socialist system though is it creates wild amounts of redundancy. The problem with socialism today is that in most countries people want much more than what their country can provide pro rata, which tells me that so long as that's the case - we're still in scarcity. I think we'd be much better off taking the energy we devote into politics half the time and throwing ourselves at innovation, advanced assembly, AI, etc. as it might help to chip off perhaps ten or fifteen years of waiting. At the same time though, if we try to do it now, we simply sink ourselves into debt, severely damage already great countries throughout the west, and we have to remember two things as well: once abundance comes where the state literally can distribute in a way where human wants and needs aren't breaking the budget anymore, we'll be in a situation where it can all be done. Until then we're hooked in a vicious circle where we see people doing poorly, spend more money on them, the deficit rises, the economy worsens, with the economy worsening more people are unemployed and needing government assistance, with more government assistance needed the deficit gets bigger faster, etc. etc..

To see a plan come together it has to be feasible. Like me right now wanting to buy an investment property. If I want something that I can fix up and rent it means that I need the fix-up money and I need to make sure that I have a fix-up between $10k and $15k. It also means that I need to look at my budget outside of that and see what I can allow for a down payment and what I need as a safety margin for living. If I go whole-hog on the down payment it means that I not only can't rennovate the place, if I lose my job I could be in foreclosure. That's where the numbers have to work and timing has to be right. I get that the government has more control over the value of currency and by printing to oblivion they can do something I can't which is essentially levy a big depreciation against all other holders as a backdoor tax. For what its worth though, for stability, they need to play a cautious game of keeping it between 2 and 3% so their ability to inflate until they've relocated what they need doesn't work.

the bike is not a great analogy since proudhon is talking pretty specifically about means of production as property. he goes into personal property in great detail elsewhere in the book.

but the point that he's getting at is actually that the whole notion is fallacious, you should try and read through the chapter as just reading the first few paragraphs or skimming it will likely not give you the gist of what he is actually getting at.

Social darwinism has always held some disturbing possibilities - it's one of the reasons romanticism and religion alike have such pervasive appeal. I don't like the idea of the strong preying on the weak, as I happen to be the weak who gets preyed on from time to time. Human nature, though, is multifaceted - we have kindness and the ability to help one another, just as much as the ability to compete and destroy one another.

Free enterprise is great in theory. I love the idea that I can start a business and, all things being equal, run my race to success the best I'm able. However, when put into practice, I find that free enterprise does not exist, and all things are not equal. Lacking capitalization, I have no capacity to unravel the bureaucratic red-tape preventing me from flourishing in the economy. This leads me to the question of what human nature actually is in practice. The strong prey on the weak any way they can. Free enterprise is just a euphemism for "whatever benefits some people and preserves their advantage over other people." Except in theory - in theory, free enterprise is wonderful and wholly desirable.

Last edited by kestrel on 04 Feb 2012, 1:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.

i'm going to try and reply to your post that followed this one at some point today. i think that that post gets closer to the crux of the matter, and i'll also try and digest what you've written here having only skimmed it at the moment...

Problem is we are never free to leave, because we are attached to our family, our friends, our language, our contry etc.


I'm not talking here about having objects to use as consumers, but to use things to make reality. Creativity is somewhat hindered by collective discussions.


Of course, money plays a role, but also being charismatic and knowing about propaganda methods.

See well known book by Edward Bernays here : http://www.psicosocial.net/es/centro-de ... propaganda


I do not agree with that. What is fallacious is to say that since there is property we can do whatever we want. What you see is more or less saying that property is evil, just like someone said before that anarchy is evil. I do not agree, I do not see evil here. Everything is a matter of quantity.


I already understood what I think is the basic misunderstanding, which is that property should be 100% mathematically correct to be used. That's not true. Almost nothing in this world is 100% mathematically correct. It's rather full of equilibrium.

I am not charismatic to most people and I have no desire to know any more about propaganda methods than I already do.

I understand. It all depends on what "need" means. Some people need to have their one territory. You may also "need" to create your own physical world. Some people need to dominate other people. Some people need someone to dominate them (domination not being exploitation of course). These are animal features, but nevertheless, they exist. Of course we can overcome some of them with education. But even if you are a writer, you have a territory, your books. It's not a material one of course. You can also "need" to lead people. It's quite a complicated issue, but there is something very primitive about humans that, I think, must be taken into account. I may be wrong about this, but that's what I deduce from my experience with humans. So even if you can find people that agree to do an anarchist society, you will also find people that do not agree. Problem is if there are people that do not agree, it would be needed to force them into. To a certain extent, any ideology about how organizing society is the projection of a mental territory on the physical world. This in itself can be a reason why someone can disagree, even if it would fulfil all human needs (including territory and so on).

But anarchy can be seen as a possible bubble in the world. So there should be law that allow people to join together to make an anarchist bubble. It would be somewhat like an association.


Ok.

no, he's not only trying to prove the illogical nature of property mathematically, if you read past the first proposition you'll see that he takes a few different angles on it.