How can Anarchocapitalism break monopolies?
- Thread starter abandonconflict
- Start date
I registered here expressly for the purpose of clarifying this... Traditional strains of anarchism DO differentiate this and it is basically as described above. "Social anarchy" (as you called it) does not avoid this at all!! Proudhon was the first person to self identify using the term "anarchist" and he wrote an entire book on this subject. Your possessions are personal property. Means of production are private property. If it's something that you are using to meet your needs and not create surplus in the form of capital it ain't a means of production. Your shovel - that's a possession = personal property. Your 200 shovels that you want to only let others use if you get to keep the product of their labor and give them wages instead - that's a means of production = private property. At least as far as traditional anarchists were concerned (i.e. Proudhon, Bakunin, Goldman, etc) it was private control of the means of production that they saw as unjust, problematic, and theft. That is what Proudhon meant by "property is theft", private property insofar as it allows some individuals to control the means of production and thus exploit those who do not control the means of production for the express purpose of accumulating capital.
I recall this article at gonzotimes does a decent job explaining this in laymans terms. I'm getting a database error trying to retrieve it at the moment but the link should be good as I very recently sent this to a friend who was having trouble with this concept. Of course one can always go to Proudhons "What is Property?" although his writing style can be tedious. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding the point of contention here, if so please feel free to disregard this post.
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/08/anarchist-views-on-property-as-theft-and-freedom/
PS: I reject the notion that people are "owned" in any way even by ones self.... To me the inherent objectification of this principle is self evident, perhaps because it's difficult for me to even consider the concept without being informed by radical feminism. People aren't objects thus people cannot be owned (at least not legitimately). This may have been touched on at the link above, I can't recall and can't access it at the moment. It's really a minor matter of terminology in the way I'm seeing it discussed here but I figured I'd weigh in with my two cents to perhaps add some perspective to the concept.
GOD HERE
Well-Known Member
Anarcho-Capitalism is an oxymoron. The ideology behind it is neo-fuedalism. Capitalism relies on a strong state and social hierarchy, both of which are incompatible with anarchism as it's built on leftist ideals. Somalia is a good example of anarcho capitalism in practice.
While Somalia is indeed a stateless society it is not anarcho anything.. There are warlords ergo hierarchy ergo not at all anarchistic.
GOD HERE
Well-Known Member
But the ideas that ANCAPS espouse are a right wing form of libertarianism. The result of those ideas in practice is Somalia. My point was that the words "anarcho" and "capitalism" are not compatible.
Point taken. I would agree that they are not compatible under my understanding of anarchism (absence of hierarchy) and my understanding of capitalism (hierarchy in that some individuals are able to exploit the labor of others and accumulate capital by controlling the means of production).
deprave
New Member
There are many means in which common property could then be maintained and controlled. Your entire argument fails at which point it created, your claiming common property can not exist in anarcho capitalism, it would exist and be maintained and not through hereditary but through contracts and firms.
Your claim that "Fedaulism exists in a free market" is ridiculous and you know it lol
deprave
New Member
your right just trying to get him to touch on it at that time I felt he didn't really want to discuss it.
deprave
New Member
Your right it is an oxymoron, just like anarcho-communist. I can see how you think that would be neo-fuedalism.
As your wrote, Capitalism relies on a strong state and social hierarchy, both of which are incompatible with anarchism
I would add to that
and a truly free market.
"Anarcho-Capitilist" / Voluntarist / Libertarian Anarchist / Market Anarchy all believe in a free market which IS NOT possible with a state .
And in a true free market (meaning in absence of corruption) does not rely (at all) or create (to the same degree) a social hierarchy
abandonconflict
Well-Known Member
Abolish the state, it gets in the way of labor exploitation!
deprave
New Member
it fosters labor exploitation
abandonconflict
Well-Known Member
It certainly does not hinder it, but it does protect private property. So who owns said private property and who does the exploiting?
See this is where I end up getting confused... How are the "truly free markets" that ancaps envision different than mutualism? Because in the context I see a some (not all) ancaps talk about free markets it sounds far more like mutualism than capitalism (as I recognize it). Under your vision of anarcho-capitalism is the assholish behavior of the hypothetical dude who wanted to horde 200 shovels to exploit people who need shovels to tend their crops problematic or not?
A lot of times the anarchism/anarcho-capitalism debate, I think, ends up being a pissing contest over semantics. Because after the revolution; that is after we smash the state (yay!), and abolish hierarchies (fuck yeah!), and fucking unicorns and rainbows are once again plentiful (woohoo!) - people are going to create forms of interacting and trading from the bottom up IF it is really anarchy. In reality differing forms of economic activity in different regions/communities would be perfectly permissible. It's just that most would probably see a distinction in personal and private property and consider private property to an assertion of illegitimate authority. And thus the asshole hoarding 200 shovels could probably expect resistance...
abandonconflict
Well-Known Member
Your arguments all revolve around property so you can't understand that LAND IS NOT PROPERTY. They got you twisted into thinking property and liberty are the same. I oppose group ownership too. It isn't property if it can't be owned.
deprave
New Member
Well it is like mutualism or really any anarchist theory, funny I used to conisder myself a mutualist, If it helps you understand, as I wrote earlier in this thread libertarian anarchist or 'ancap' view other anarchist theories as 'excellent business plans' and not as political philosophy or the way society should be, your last paragraph summed it up pretty well I am not sure why you are confused.
deprave
New Member
Unlike this dude who is incredibly confused^
Property is a very important part of liberty, nodoby thinks they are the same.
Land can be property.
abandonconflict
Well-Known Member
"If I don't own the earth, I'm not free."
confused because if ancaps share these foundational perspectives i'm not sure why all the freaking infighting is necessary!!! i.e. let's all get the statists on the same page, smash hierarchies, and figure out how to exchange goods and services from the bottom up as we go. it does seem like differences in terminology and semantics between social anarchists and ancaps leads to some of the confusion. it can be counterproductive. i look at it this way: anyone who wants to eliminate hierarchy is a comrade of mine, we can settle our differences after we achieve our common goals
deprave
New Member
Point being....
If you want to have your little anachro communist community you can have in ancap, shit you can have it in half the U.S. If enough people agree....but you can't have anything else, it would be just that. So what is true liberty?
abandonconflict
Well-Known Member
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/wilson_1.html
How a Libertarian Capitalist Became a Libertarian Socialist
Chris Wilson
A couple years back when I was working toward a philosophy major in college, I wrote a rebuttal the section of The Anarchist FAQ that covers anarcho-capitalism. I removed the rebuttal from the web because I didn't have the time or inclination to continue to maintain it or expand upon it. Three years later, I've come to find myself disagreeing with my old rebuttals and agreeing with the FAQ. What follows is my story.
I began my tenure as a right-wing libertarian by reading Ayn Rand, who dissuaded me from the rather muddled left-wing sympathies I held at the time. I was only a Rand enthusiast for a short time, however, and I soon developed an interest in the "more reasonable" free-market thinkers, such as von Mises, Nozick, Hayek, David Friedman, etc. I was an ardent supporter of unimpeded and "stateless" capitalism for the course of almost 3 years, and developed and/or adopted every possible philosophical and economic justification that can be conceived of for its defense. Before I graduated college, however, I expelled my belief that one can claim private property rights upon land. I advocated a labor theory of property, and considering that land is not a produced good, I found that it wasn't defensible according to the principles I advocated. I concluded that one who hoards land is placing a restriction upon the liberty of others to use it or to travel by way of it without justification, and hence the claimant should compensate them by paying a land value tax to earn exclusive rights to it.
Despite my new Georgist land-socialist views, I still advocated a capitalist economic system with respect to produced goods. However, I did become much more critical of corporations, and I became upset with other libertarians for their lack of focus upon the injustices perpetrated by corporations. I wanted to abolish corporate charters, subsidies, intellectual property, regulatory privileges, land grants, etc., as I considered them violations of liberty. If you press a right-libertarian about the privileges corporations receive, they usually say, "Oh, well I'm against those", but they hardly ever take the initiative in directing any criticism against them. More often than not, they praise the alleged "virtues" of corporations, while focusing upon how the government violates these corporations "rights".
When I first became an "anarcho-capitalist", I thought corporate abuses could be avoided in an economic realm in which corporations didn't enjoy as many regulatory privileges. I initially liked all the "dot coms" and "ecommerce" companies -- I considered the Internet industry to be one in which free market principles were respected, contrary to so many other industries. However, in the past year, I've seen all these companies become just as ruthless as any multinational. I thought that all of the "dot coms" were small as a result of the industry functioning according to genuine free market principles, but in reality, they were just small *to begin with*. Most of them are small no longer. Furthermore, the more prosperous of these companies are now seeking to benefit from state privilege, which is evident in the many intellectual property lawsuits that are currently pending in the ecommerce industry.
When I was discovering this (and becoming a hardcore Linux user in the process), I was working as a customer service representative in a large and very well known software corporation (not Microsoft). The act of *working* instead of going to school gave me a new respect for organized labor movements. Additionally, it gave me an appreciation for the extent to which corporations screw their customers. As I spent the next six months working for this producer of buggy software, I came to the realization that my job as a "customer service" rep involved little more than developing clever rationalizations to defend this company's fraudulent activities. Most other reps bought into the company's rationalizations -- most of the employees, including the supervisors, sincerely believed that the company provided "world class" service to the customers, which couldn't be further from the truth. I'm ashamed to say that I bought into *some* of the propaganda as a result of searching for ways to pacify irate customers. And because of the position that we were in -- that is, being constantly screamed at and criticized for policies beyond our control -- it was impossible to refrain from becoming extremely resentful towards rightfully upset customers. Finally, the company adopted some nasty new policies which were so obviously indefensible that I had to end my relationship with the company on general principle. I left completely disillusioned with corporate culture.
Although I favored free markets, I did so because I considered them to be necessitated by the principles that I held. Principles always came *first* for me -- not economics. However, around the time that I quit working at the software corporation, it finally truly sank in that businesses couldn't *care less* about principles. The questions "Is it right?" or "Is it just?" do not even enter the minds of the decision makers of capitalist businesses -- such questions are beside the point in their eyes. Although I was a right-libertarian at the time, I held my views because I genuinely believed that they followed logically from my beloved principle of self-government. Even though I knew that *many* capitalist businesses were completely lacking in principles, I did ignorantly believe that this was only true of large government aided corporations. It was very disheartening to learn over time that this fact applies to *most* businesses, regardless of whether or not they happen to be corporations that profit from state favor. If they don't actually receive favors from the state, then it is typically their *aim* to receive them.
A week after I quit the software company, I got lucky and snagged a job providing tech support at a local ISP. I thought to myself that this company, being a local business, would be fundamentally different. While I do greatly prefer working for the ISP to working for the mega-software giant, it quickly became obvious to me that the motivations and principles (or lack thereof) of the president and major shareholders of the ISP are no different from that of any major corporation. Although the ISP is relatively small as of now, it doesn't aim to remain as such for very long. I will say that an ISP's expansion is generally not favored by employees, as it forces us to take responsibility for customer issues that we're in no position to fix (as was so common with the software company). Furthermore, those who run the company still think of the employees as a cost to be minimized. The rule is to hire as few as possible, pay them as little as possible, and make them work as often as possible. Since starting with the company, I've taken on many more responsibilities than just tech support, but my wages haven't risen. Despite the technical nature of my job, the workers at the nearby grocery store make more than I, as they're unionized and I'm not.
My experience in the work world forced me to seriously reconsider my advocacy of capitalism in any form. As I was still very committed to libertarian principles, I began to study the "socialist anarchists". (I put "socialist anarchist" in quotes, as I now consider such a term to be a redundancy -- anarchists are necessarily socialists.) I forced myself to consider the fundamental disagreement that separates Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Malatesta from Rand, von Mises, and Friedman. My answer to myself: The advocates of capitalism believe that one can sign away or sell off one's liberty, whereas anarchists do not. As a right-wing libertarian capitalist, I was of the opinion that one could enter into a morally binding agreement in which one sacrifices one's liberty in exchange for a wage. My position was that a worker would be committing fraud against the employer if he attempted to retain rights to the full product of his labor. My argument was that if an employer has a "legitimate" prior claim upon the capital being used, then he has the right to dictate its terms of use. The laborer doesn't have the right to anything more than what the capitalist agrees to give, just as the capitalist doesn't have the right to take anything more than what the laborer agrees to give. (Of course, I didn't realize in my early "anarcho-capitalist" days that capitalists almost always demand more than what the worker initially agrees to give.)
My current position is that one cannot be ethically bound by agreements that restrict one's liberty to be self-governing. It has always been my view that one cannot be bound by an agreement to be a slave. Although one can enter into a contract that mandates one to serve as a slave, one should be considered free to cease honoring that contract at any time. However, I hadn't been applying this principle to all forms of domination -- I only applied it to full-time chattel slavery, not to wage slavery, domestic tyranny, etc. When I was working out my views regarding this issue, I decided to simplify my decision by subjecting myself to a thought experiment: Jones is a individual who has zero access to capital, which excludes him from being self-employed. He must must find somebody who will share access to capital if he is to continue to eat. Fortunately, Smith has plenty of capital, and is willing to share it -- under certain conditions of course. Smith says to Jones that he can use Smith's capital to produce, *provided* that Jones engages in 90% of the productivity while Smith engages in 10%. Also, Jones will only receive 10% of the revenues despite all of his hard work, while Smith gets to keep 90% for his hoggish self. Jones agrees to these conditions because he has no other option. Is Jones morally bound by his agreement to allow Smith to keep 8 in 9 parts of what what Jones produces? The capitalist, of course, answers, "Yes", and I once would have given the same answer, even though I knew intuitively that such an arrangement would be grossly unfair. My current answer is "No" -- this relationship between Smith and Jones is inherently exploitive, and Jones is entitled to much better.
That completed my conversion to real anarchism, which is to say *libertarian socialism*. The evolutionary process was slow -- it didn't happen all in one night. I continued to consider myself an individualist anarchist for awhile, and remained more attracted to the ideas of Tucker and Proudhon than any of the social anarchists. But as I read more Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and Rocker and studied the Spanish Civil War and Russian Revolution, I concluded that social anarchism was a better alternative. Unlike the individualist or mutualist varieties of anarchism, anarcho-communism doesn't provide an avenue for capitalism to reestablish itself and it has had partial revolutionary success in the past histories of countries such as Spain and the Ukraine. What initially turned me off to social anarchism is the fact that many of its advocates don't address the prospect of what's commonly called the "tyranny of the majority", which I think is a valid concern. It cannot be emphasized enough that under anarchism, nobody would be forced to join a commune or a federation. If one wishes to be free to work independently of a democratic collective, this freedom would be acknowledged and respected, provided that one doesn't attempt to hoard more resources than one uses or employ people for a wage. Granted, anarchists wouldn't *ban* wage labor, but "agreements" in which workers sign away their liberty would not be enforced.
Since making the transition from right-wing to left-wing libertarianism, I've discovered that factionalism and sectarianism is just as pervasive here as it was there, if not more so. Technology is a good example of an issue that divides the anarchist movement. On one hand, there are the anarcho-primitivist luddites who eschew all forms of complex technology and wish to return to a hunter-gather society, and on the other, there are the anarchists who feel that technology can be beneficial if its development is directed by workers themselves in a manner that is accountable to the communities it affects. I fall somewhere in the middle between the two positions -- I have no desire to return to a hunter/gatherer society, but would also prefer not to rely upon technology that requires a division of labor so extreme that productivity becomes an alienated and meaningless activity. Working within the computer industry, I also understand that when technological complexity transcends our ability to understand it, this is an instance of the machine being in control of us and not vice-versa. Whether technology is a form of liberation or domination is a topic hotly debated by anarchists, but they agree, contra the right-wing "libertarians", that a society in which human-created circumstances force people to "agree" to subject their will to that of a boss is by no means "free".
Webbed with permission from the author.
How a Libertarian Capitalist Became a Libertarian Socialist
Chris Wilson
A couple years back when I was working toward a philosophy major in college, I wrote a rebuttal the section of The Anarchist FAQ that covers anarcho-capitalism. I removed the rebuttal from the web because I didn't have the time or inclination to continue to maintain it or expand upon it. Three years later, I've come to find myself disagreeing with my old rebuttals and agreeing with the FAQ. What follows is my story.
I began my tenure as a right-wing libertarian by reading Ayn Rand, who dissuaded me from the rather muddled left-wing sympathies I held at the time. I was only a Rand enthusiast for a short time, however, and I soon developed an interest in the "more reasonable" free-market thinkers, such as von Mises, Nozick, Hayek, David Friedman, etc. I was an ardent supporter of unimpeded and "stateless" capitalism for the course of almost 3 years, and developed and/or adopted every possible philosophical and economic justification that can be conceived of for its defense. Before I graduated college, however, I expelled my belief that one can claim private property rights upon land. I advocated a labor theory of property, and considering that land is not a produced good, I found that it wasn't defensible according to the principles I advocated. I concluded that one who hoards land is placing a restriction upon the liberty of others to use it or to travel by way of it without justification, and hence the claimant should compensate them by paying a land value tax to earn exclusive rights to it.
Despite my new Georgist land-socialist views, I still advocated a capitalist economic system with respect to produced goods. However, I did become much more critical of corporations, and I became upset with other libertarians for their lack of focus upon the injustices perpetrated by corporations. I wanted to abolish corporate charters, subsidies, intellectual property, regulatory privileges, land grants, etc., as I considered them violations of liberty. If you press a right-libertarian about the privileges corporations receive, they usually say, "Oh, well I'm against those", but they hardly ever take the initiative in directing any criticism against them. More often than not, they praise the alleged "virtues" of corporations, while focusing upon how the government violates these corporations "rights".
When I first became an "anarcho-capitalist", I thought corporate abuses could be avoided in an economic realm in which corporations didn't enjoy as many regulatory privileges. I initially liked all the "dot coms" and "ecommerce" companies -- I considered the Internet industry to be one in which free market principles were respected, contrary to so many other industries. However, in the past year, I've seen all these companies become just as ruthless as any multinational. I thought that all of the "dot coms" were small as a result of the industry functioning according to genuine free market principles, but in reality, they were just small *to begin with*. Most of them are small no longer. Furthermore, the more prosperous of these companies are now seeking to benefit from state privilege, which is evident in the many intellectual property lawsuits that are currently pending in the ecommerce industry.
When I was discovering this (and becoming a hardcore Linux user in the process), I was working as a customer service representative in a large and very well known software corporation (not Microsoft). The act of *working* instead of going to school gave me a new respect for organized labor movements. Additionally, it gave me an appreciation for the extent to which corporations screw their customers. As I spent the next six months working for this producer of buggy software, I came to the realization that my job as a "customer service" rep involved little more than developing clever rationalizations to defend this company's fraudulent activities. Most other reps bought into the company's rationalizations -- most of the employees, including the supervisors, sincerely believed that the company provided "world class" service to the customers, which couldn't be further from the truth. I'm ashamed to say that I bought into *some* of the propaganda as a result of searching for ways to pacify irate customers. And because of the position that we were in -- that is, being constantly screamed at and criticized for policies beyond our control -- it was impossible to refrain from becoming extremely resentful towards rightfully upset customers. Finally, the company adopted some nasty new policies which were so obviously indefensible that I had to end my relationship with the company on general principle. I left completely disillusioned with corporate culture.
Although I favored free markets, I did so because I considered them to be necessitated by the principles that I held. Principles always came *first* for me -- not economics. However, around the time that I quit working at the software corporation, it finally truly sank in that businesses couldn't *care less* about principles. The questions "Is it right?" or "Is it just?" do not even enter the minds of the decision makers of capitalist businesses -- such questions are beside the point in their eyes. Although I was a right-libertarian at the time, I held my views because I genuinely believed that they followed logically from my beloved principle of self-government. Even though I knew that *many* capitalist businesses were completely lacking in principles, I did ignorantly believe that this was only true of large government aided corporations. It was very disheartening to learn over time that this fact applies to *most* businesses, regardless of whether or not they happen to be corporations that profit from state favor. If they don't actually receive favors from the state, then it is typically their *aim* to receive them.
A week after I quit the software company, I got lucky and snagged a job providing tech support at a local ISP. I thought to myself that this company, being a local business, would be fundamentally different. While I do greatly prefer working for the ISP to working for the mega-software giant, it quickly became obvious to me that the motivations and principles (or lack thereof) of the president and major shareholders of the ISP are no different from that of any major corporation. Although the ISP is relatively small as of now, it doesn't aim to remain as such for very long. I will say that an ISP's expansion is generally not favored by employees, as it forces us to take responsibility for customer issues that we're in no position to fix (as was so common with the software company). Furthermore, those who run the company still think of the employees as a cost to be minimized. The rule is to hire as few as possible, pay them as little as possible, and make them work as often as possible. Since starting with the company, I've taken on many more responsibilities than just tech support, but my wages haven't risen. Despite the technical nature of my job, the workers at the nearby grocery store make more than I, as they're unionized and I'm not.
My experience in the work world forced me to seriously reconsider my advocacy of capitalism in any form. As I was still very committed to libertarian principles, I began to study the "socialist anarchists". (I put "socialist anarchist" in quotes, as I now consider such a term to be a redundancy -- anarchists are necessarily socialists.) I forced myself to consider the fundamental disagreement that separates Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Malatesta from Rand, von Mises, and Friedman. My answer to myself: The advocates of capitalism believe that one can sign away or sell off one's liberty, whereas anarchists do not. As a right-wing libertarian capitalist, I was of the opinion that one could enter into a morally binding agreement in which one sacrifices one's liberty in exchange for a wage. My position was that a worker would be committing fraud against the employer if he attempted to retain rights to the full product of his labor. My argument was that if an employer has a "legitimate" prior claim upon the capital being used, then he has the right to dictate its terms of use. The laborer doesn't have the right to anything more than what the capitalist agrees to give, just as the capitalist doesn't have the right to take anything more than what the laborer agrees to give. (Of course, I didn't realize in my early "anarcho-capitalist" days that capitalists almost always demand more than what the worker initially agrees to give.)
My current position is that one cannot be ethically bound by agreements that restrict one's liberty to be self-governing. It has always been my view that one cannot be bound by an agreement to be a slave. Although one can enter into a contract that mandates one to serve as a slave, one should be considered free to cease honoring that contract at any time. However, I hadn't been applying this principle to all forms of domination -- I only applied it to full-time chattel slavery, not to wage slavery, domestic tyranny, etc. When I was working out my views regarding this issue, I decided to simplify my decision by subjecting myself to a thought experiment: Jones is a individual who has zero access to capital, which excludes him from being self-employed. He must must find somebody who will share access to capital if he is to continue to eat. Fortunately, Smith has plenty of capital, and is willing to share it -- under certain conditions of course. Smith says to Jones that he can use Smith's capital to produce, *provided* that Jones engages in 90% of the productivity while Smith engages in 10%. Also, Jones will only receive 10% of the revenues despite all of his hard work, while Smith gets to keep 90% for his hoggish self. Jones agrees to these conditions because he has no other option. Is Jones morally bound by his agreement to allow Smith to keep 8 in 9 parts of what what Jones produces? The capitalist, of course, answers, "Yes", and I once would have given the same answer, even though I knew intuitively that such an arrangement would be grossly unfair. My current answer is "No" -- this relationship between Smith and Jones is inherently exploitive, and Jones is entitled to much better.
That completed my conversion to real anarchism, which is to say *libertarian socialism*. The evolutionary process was slow -- it didn't happen all in one night. I continued to consider myself an individualist anarchist for awhile, and remained more attracted to the ideas of Tucker and Proudhon than any of the social anarchists. But as I read more Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and Rocker and studied the Spanish Civil War and Russian Revolution, I concluded that social anarchism was a better alternative. Unlike the individualist or mutualist varieties of anarchism, anarcho-communism doesn't provide an avenue for capitalism to reestablish itself and it has had partial revolutionary success in the past histories of countries such as Spain and the Ukraine. What initially turned me off to social anarchism is the fact that many of its advocates don't address the prospect of what's commonly called the "tyranny of the majority", which I think is a valid concern. It cannot be emphasized enough that under anarchism, nobody would be forced to join a commune or a federation. If one wishes to be free to work independently of a democratic collective, this freedom would be acknowledged and respected, provided that one doesn't attempt to hoard more resources than one uses or employ people for a wage. Granted, anarchists wouldn't *ban* wage labor, but "agreements" in which workers sign away their liberty would not be enforced.
Since making the transition from right-wing to left-wing libertarianism, I've discovered that factionalism and sectarianism is just as pervasive here as it was there, if not more so. Technology is a good example of an issue that divides the anarchist movement. On one hand, there are the anarcho-primitivist luddites who eschew all forms of complex technology and wish to return to a hunter-gather society, and on the other, there are the anarchists who feel that technology can be beneficial if its development is directed by workers themselves in a manner that is accountable to the communities it affects. I fall somewhere in the middle between the two positions -- I have no desire to return to a hunter/gatherer society, but would also prefer not to rely upon technology that requires a division of labor so extreme that productivity becomes an alienated and meaningless activity. Working within the computer industry, I also understand that when technological complexity transcends our ability to understand it, this is an instance of the machine being in control of us and not vice-versa. Whether technology is a form of liberation or domination is a topic hotly debated by anarchists, but they agree, contra the right-wing "libertarians", that a society in which human-created circumstances force people to "agree" to subject their will to that of a boss is by no means "free".
Webbed with permission from the author.