protovack,
I have never seen an anti-capitalist post on these forums before. You must be the first!
Such a view is very, very unpopular around here. We believe in personal AND economic freedom. There can be no distinction between them.
A "corporation" is an organizational classification created by the government through which the government gives special privileges such as financial immunity to individuals who incorporate their businesses.
In reality, we're not talking about "corporations", we're talking about companies, businesses, and entrepreneurs. In other words, we're talking about you and me. This is why economic freedom cannot be separated from personal freedom.
People cannot be "exploited" in voluntary transactions such as voluntary employment. If you do not like your pay, then find another job. Involuntary exploitive labor, therefore, does not exist in this country as far as I am aware.
Unfortunately it is a little more complicated than that, there are a group of left libertarians who call themselves Agorists (practicing "counter-economics") who are critical of capitalists (vs entreprenuers/innovators w/o state sanctioned priviledge) calling for a "pure" freemarket anarchism and draw this distinction:
excerpt:
Q: What are the main differences between left-libertarianism/agorism and anarcho-capitalism?
SEK3 - There are several ways of looking at this, from a theoretical view, from a strategic view, with left jargon, with right terminology, etc., but it's a fair question.
In theory, those calling themselves anarcho-capitalists (I believe Jarrett Wollstein, in his defection from Objectivism, coined the term back in early 1968) do not differ drastically from agorists; both claim to want anarchy (statelessness, and we pretty much agree on the definition of the State as a monopoly of legitimized coercion, borrowed from Rand and reinforced by Rothbard). But the moment we apply the ideology to the real world (as the Marxoids say, "Actually Existing Capitalism") we diverge on several points immediately.
First and foremost,
agorists stress the Entrepreneur, see
non-statist Capitalists (in the sense of
holders of capital, not necessary ideologically aware) as relatively neutral drone-like non-innovators, and
pro-statist Capitalists as
the main Evil in the political realm. Hence our favorable outlook toward "conspiracy theory" fans, even when we think they're misled or confused. As for the Workers and Peasants, we find them an embarrassing relic from a previous Age at best and look forward to the day that they will die out from lack of market demand (hence my phrase, deliberately tweaking the Marxoids, "liquidation of the Proletariat"). One can sum that up in the vulgar phrase, "If the State had been abolished a century ago, we'd all have robots and summer homes in the Asteroid belt."
The "Anarcho-capitalists" tend to conflate the Innovator (Entrepreneur) and Capitalist, much as the Marxoids and cruder collectivists do. (It's interesting that the gradual victory of Austrian Economics, particularly in Europe, has led to some New Leftists at least to take our claim seriously that the Capitalist and Entrepreneur are very different classes requiring different analyses, and attempt to grapple with the problem [from their point of view] that creates for them.)
Agorists are strict Rothbardians, and, I would argue in this case, even more Rothbardian than Rothbard, who still had some of the older confusion in his thinking. But he was Misesian, and
Mises made the original distinction between Innovators/Arbitrageurs and Capital-holders (i.e.,
mortgage-holders, coupon-clippers, financiers, worthless heirs, landlords, etc.). With the Market largely moving to the 'net, it is becoming ever-more pure entrepreneurial, leaving the brick 'n' mortar "capitalist" behind.
But it is dealing with current politics and current defence where Agorists most strongly differ from "anarcho-capitalists."
A-caps generally (and they have lots of individual variation) believe in involvement with existing political parties (libertarian, Republican, even Democrat and Socialist, such as the Canadian NDP), and, in the extreme case, even support the Pentagon and U.S. Defense complex to fight communism (I wonder what their excuse is now?) until we somehow get to abolishing the State. Agorists, as you have undoubtedly picked up, are revolutionary;
we don't see the market triumphing without the collapse of the State and its ruling caste, and, as I point out in New Libertarian Manifesto, historically, they just don't go without unleashing senseless violence on the usually peaceful revolutionaries who then defend themselves.
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I have posted on this in the commons and have a link there to the full interview for those interested:
http://forum.freestateproject.org/index.php?board=46;action=display;threadid=5771To read the Left Libertarian Manifesto from the Agorists (author died last week):
http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/nlm/nlm.html
Author
Topic: Anarchy and FSP together??? (Read 29239 times)