Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid • Hacker News Board

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#81

Post by sershe » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

mellavora wrote: post #72

sershe wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's possible, it existed before capitalism and had tons of mutual aid and resilience. It's called "subsistence farming". Without surplus extraction + capital accumulation, it was always stuck at low equilibrium where everyone is poor. See e.g. [1] Also as a side note I don't discuss here, anyone quick enough to band together and abuse the mutual-aiding community was easily able to do so, hence feudalism, o…

I agree with your point that strong "mutual aide"/kin institutions often (but not necessarily) lead to low economic growth. And clearly surplus extraction + capital accumulation (leading to productive investment) strongly enhance economic growth. However, capitalism in its current form of all-consuming consumerism, a system that must eat everything including itself, I'm not so sold on. Just finished reading the Laund…

I don't think consumerism and capitalism are related in this way. Consumerism just happens to be what people want to do. Capitalism as a better substrate allows people to do more of what they want to do... people in different systems (like Soviet Union) for the most part were just as "consumerist", they simply couldn't do as much consumption because the system sucked. That "consumerism" is bad is your personal value judgement (and mine, but I recognize it as such).

It's kinda like, most major cultures wanted to, let's say, (among other things) study the stars and enslave other people. Primitive technology and economy produced a lot of cultures with calendars and simple systems of slavery. Stable empire like e.g. Caliphate was able to leverage their economy and better technology to do better at astronomy, and to do some real large-scale enslaving. Western countries eventually used even better technology and economic system to do things like send people to other planets and do some truly industrial-scale slavery. Everything just works better with technology - what you choose to do and how to change values to want astronomy and not want slavery is a separate question. Ditto capitalism vs consumerism.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#82

Post by pixl97 » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 9:19 PM UTC

incompatible wrote: post #8

bxjx wrote: post #3

"Conquest of Bread" had a huge impact on my politics. It cut through the capitalist realist narrative that we're all in economic competition and that capitalism is the only sane solution. It made me feel like another world is possible. I changed my life to pursue these other possibilities ever since.

I heard (of course) of anarchism a long time ago, but I always wrote it off as impractical: since without government, there's nobody to stop somebody from starting one. However, this may be incorrect, but it does require a population that is always willing to fight against the formation of a government. I think now that anarchism is practical, at least for a population of committed anarchists, and in the absence of h…

>I think now that anarchism is practical, at least for a population of committed anarchists, and in the absence of hostile external forces.

I too classify all my physics problems as 'spherical cows in a vacuum', but unless you've ignored Twitter your entire life you should realize powerful forces of propaganda exist that ensure that this will never exist. Threats exist in the form of ruthless humans that will ally with the corruptible and greedy to consolidate power to the point of acting with wonton violence. These people use ideas of nationalism and shared identity (cooperation) along with propaganda that militarizes the group against common enemies, generally being other groups that have resources they can take.

In general having a 'stable' society with wealth can be an inoculation against this human behavior of falling for propaganda, but again, it requires stability against the environment, against disease, against economic swings, against competing ideas. Anarchist societies just seem to handwave these issues away.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#83

Post by pixl97 » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #39

incompatible wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard (of course) of anarchism a long time ago, but I always wrote it off as impractical: since without government, there's nobody to stop somebody from starting one. However, this may be incorrect, but it does require a population that is always willing to fight against the formation of a government. I think now that anarchism is practical, at least for a population of committed anarchists, and in the absence of h…

In what universe can there exist a society not subject to external forces?

In the dreamland libertarians seem to live in.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#84

Post by pixl97 » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #31

okasaki wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can private property exist in such a society? If you and I both claim to own some land and we can't come to an agreement, isn't it going to be decided with superior force? How is this society mutually beneficial by definition? If I own the fields and decide to destroy the produce (it's mine, I can do whatever I want?) while the locals starve, this is fine right?

> isn't it going to be decided with superior force? Yes. There is always going to be a superior force and it decides who owns what. Practically, the point of anarchism is that the force should be limited (voluntarily, like how armies in a healthy democracy voluntarily subordinate themselves to the voters) to the absolute minimum role possible. For example, the popular configuration right now is that the group that co…

>Anyone using force to achieve their aims gets removed from society,

I think I see a fatal flaw in the logic here....

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#85

Post by _0ffh » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

mftrhu wrote: post #79

_0ffh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the very same Wikipedia article you quote admits that central characteristics of capitalism include competitive markets, private property, property rights recognition, and voluntary exchange. Neither National Socialism nor Fascist corporatism had strong protection of - competitive markets: markets where heavily regulated and great parts of national production and ressources where directed and allocated by the go…

Oh, you probably meant "state capitalist". The definition of that fits to a tee. > State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial (i.e. for-profit) economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, centralized management and wage labor). [...] Other examples include Singapore u…

Lol, "Marxist literature defines state capitalism as a social system combining capitalism with ownership or control by a state".

Excuse me, when I respectfully decline that definition. What makes or breaks capitalism is private property, including and specifically of the "means of production", also called "capital goods".

"Engels argued that the tools for ending capitalism are found in state capitalism", that's like saying that eating your steak well done gives you the tools for slaughtering the cow.

OTOH, "It is not commonly realized that State Capitalism covers nothing more than what used to be called Planned Economy and State Socialism, and that State Capitalism, Planned Economy, and State Socialism diverge only in non-essentials from the classic ideal of egalitarian Socialism". At least one can find some sensible definitions in the article.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#86

Post by pixl97 » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #48

For some weird reason, people misunderstand the concept of anarchy, always using this word as a synonym for 'chaos'. In fact, anarchy is a theoretical and highly organized society that relies not on leadership and coercion to function, but on all members of society, who are educated and know their duties. For some weird reason, people believe it to be impossible, but we clearly see it happen in many circumstances, es…

>especially if you gather small-to-medium group of intelligent people together.

Hasn't everyone on HN read the Mythical Man-Month? Or, if you're a parent a corollary statement would be "The more boys you put in a group the faster the sum IQ reaches a negative number"

Small groups tend to be self selecting and typically more compatible. Large populations are not. If you have one group that wants to piss in the river because it's close, and another group that does not want that because it is poisoning the water, there is going to be conflict. Now, this could be settled economically/infrastructurally by providing a sanitary sewer system, or by the down river group getting cholera and dying off, or the downriver group violently killing the upriver group off. But at the end of the day you'll have an loss of happiness cause by one group being dead, or both groups paying taxes so the system works.

Anarchists tend to offer no solutions even for already solved problems, much less without introducing new ones.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#87

Post by incompatible » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 10:06 PM UTC

abeppu wrote: post #64

incompatible wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard (of course) of anarchism a long time ago, but I always wrote it off as impractical: since without government, there's nobody to stop somebody from starting one. However, this may be incorrect, but it does require a population that is always willing to fight against the formation of a government. I think now that anarchism is practical, at least for a population of committed anarchists, and in the absence of h…

> It was in Le Guin's novel "The Dispossessed" that I first read a convincing account of such a society It's been a minute, but _was_ The Dispossessed a convincing account of such a society? From what I remember, the protagonist encounters academic gate-keepers who effectively control who gets to do teaching and research or what gets communicated to the main planet, centralized systems choose things as personal as wh…

It wasn't perfect anarchism, by any means. Apparently Le Guin was well aware of how anarchism and human nature would tend to conflict, and she described only an "ambiguous utopia".

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#88

Post by incompatible » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #39

incompatible wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard (of course) of anarchism a long time ago, but I always wrote it off as impractical: since without government, there's nobody to stop somebody from starting one. However, this may be incorrect, but it does require a population that is always willing to fight against the formation of a government. I think now that anarchism is practical, at least for a population of committed anarchists, and in the absence of h…

In what universe can there exist a society not subject to external forces?

At least to the point that the society is left to itself without being invaded. That was the issue for the anarchist experiment in 1930s Spain, it was shut down by fascists and Soviet-aligned communists. Would it have survived if left to itself? I guess we'll never know.

I find the general unwillingness to experiment with alternative models of society, whether they are libertarianism, or anarchism, or whatever, quite disappointing. A few "special economic zones" doesn't seem like too much to ask for.

Instead, we just replicate the same old model, which these days is a mixture of capitalism and government authority. The government authority supposedly either suppresses the worst outcomes of capitalism, or is a source of corruption and abuse in itself. Now we have well over 100 such governments around the world, with varying degrees of success for the majority of their populations, and I'm not sure we are really learning anything.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#89

Post by incompatible » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 10:26 PM UTC

sershe wrote: post #68

incompatible wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard (of course) of anarchism a long time ago, but I always wrote it off as impractical: since without government, there's nobody to stop somebody from starting one. However, this may be incorrect, but it does require a population that is always willing to fight against the formation of a government. I think now that anarchism is practical, at least for a population of committed anarchists, and in the absence of h…

Yeah, if everyone was like me, I bet AnCap would work (very different from most-common versions of anarchism, and in my view, the only non-morally-repugnant one - but still impractical). Heck I bet if you could clone some saints old-school communism would work just fine :) The main problem is how a society can work without such restrictions...

Anarcho-capitalism is nothing like the communist anarchism that Kropotkin was writing about. There's no pretence at equality, you've basically just replaced government repression with private repression by the wealthy.

It's a choice of economic system, not morality. There's nothing immoral about making all work voluntary and eliminating private property, it's just a different system with different expectations.

The rule about property in communist anarchism would be something like: it's yours for as long as you are using it, but once you no longer need it, somebody else can take it to use (or repurpose the materials).

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#90

Post by roenxi » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #84

roenxi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> isn't it going to be decided with superior force? Yes. There is always going to be a superior force and it decides who owns what. Practically, the point of anarchism is that the force should be limited (voluntarily, like how armies in a healthy democracy voluntarily subordinate themselves to the voters) to the absolute minimum role possible. For example, the popular configuration right now is that the group that co…

>Anyone using force to achieve their aims gets removed from society, I think I see a fatal flaw in the logic here....

That part is also something that most societies do right now. What do you see as the flaw there?