Introduction

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds the concept of liberty as a core value, advocates for minimal state intervention in the free market, promotes capitalism as the only viable economic system, and defends private property rights above anything else.

Libertarianism in its broader sense is present both on the left and the right, amongst communist and libertarian socialists, as well as anarcho-capitalists, neoliberals and classical liberals. This essay focuses on the latter faction of this philosophy, the right-wing.

“The adherents of libertarianism believe that private morality is not the state's affair and that therefore activities such as drug use and prostitution, which arguably harm no one but the participants, should not be illegal. Libertarianism shares elements with anarchism, although it is generally associated more with the political right, chiefly in the US.” (LEXICO.COM)

“Like most forms of libertarianism, right-libertarianism supports civil liberties, but especially natural law, negative rights and a major reversal of the modern welfare state” (POPULISMSTUDIES.ORG)

Libertarianism has roots in the philosophy of John Locke and other liberal thinkers, and its modern day form was laid out by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, as an alternative to the Keynesian welfare state that became the norm following the great depression. They wanted to create a new form of economic liberalism without the flaws that led to the great depression, and without a strong welfare state and its social safety net. Neoliberalism. It has been popularized as an alternative to what they call « crony capitalism » and socialism, as libertarianism. It is mainly pushed for by those who believe that state intervention is the reason for any economic downturn; it’s the doctrine of « laissez-faire ». Libertarianism is based on a ‘naturalist’ philosophy and ethics, which pretends that societal institutions obey to natural law. According to them, society is regulated like the movement of planets and escapes human control or intervention. The free market is the mechanism of social and economic coordination, and its laws are as inflexible as nature itself. An ‘invisible hand’, like God, harmonizes production and efficiently distributes resources to achieve the best possible outcomes. Private property should thus be left alone, to be handled by this invisible hand. From these assertions, any intervention by the state in the free market is superfluous. According to Hayek b, society is similar to a cosmos, where everything has a purpose and should be left to do its thing. 

From this understanding of right-wing libertarianism, my goal is to show that libertarians have a poor and surface-level comprehension of socio-economic issues, material reality and capitalism itself. I can attest to my experience with libertarians, with most of them going back to the idealist, hypothetical arguments like «in an ideal free market capitalist society this (insert flaw inherent to capitalism) wouldn’t happen. » It remains that the economy's growth does not mean the standard of living will rise accordingly, as we have seen in Chile under Pinochet. Analyzing and deconstructing libertarianism takes a while, but it's simplistic world outlook makes it that much easier.

State and Markets

The first thing I want to analyze is the entity of the state and its interaction with the market throughout the development of capitalism, as well as the concept of the market in the first place. Libertarians, more generally proponents of laissez-faire capitalism separate state and market, arguing that the former is nothing but an obstacle to the latter's prosperity. That state intervention in the economy should be lifted, to « let be » the markets and their actors. Let’s deconstruct this claim and analyze its validity. 

In actuality, the state and the market have mostly always overlapped, as a natural development of capitalism. The state’s role has been to achieve the desired outcomes of a given society and protect its actors, to protect private property, hold back the negative effects of capitalism and other roles. This ties in with the laissez-faire theory of spontaneous order which argues that capitalism, free markets and individuals pursuing their self-centred interests are a natural system that creates harmony, when in fact it leads to outcomes opposite of the ‘desired’ ones. Something I want to stress is that ‘desired’ is hard to really define here, as I interpret it as socially desirable - achieving the desired socio-economic goals. In contrast, the proponents of laissez-faire capitalism are primarily corporations and capitalists, who advocate for it only to further their profit through deregulation and dismantling labour unions and social services. 

The theory of spontaneous order is quite odd: for Hayek, the social  reality can only be explained through the process of natural selection. However, he doesn't apply this natural selection to individuals only, but to societal practices, that allow better adaptation to circumstances. This reference to Darwin ‘legitimizes’ this neoliberal ideology by giving it a seemingly scientific basis. But he doesn’t appeal to Darwin, instead to Spencer, a philosophical evolutionist and hard-line classical liberal. He argues that capitalism is a natural evolution of social behaviours and arose by itself. This myth assumes capitalism is a natural evolution of societies; when the conditions that gave rise to the capitalist mode of production were not developed naturally. There needed to be established, from egalitarian societies, a class of people who depend on selling their labour-power to another, a higher class of exploiters simply to subsist. This class development was not natural, but instead elaborately constructed through policies of expropriation and reattribution of property to this latter class of capitalists, privatizing and concentrating land and property in the hands of an increasingly small minority of capitalists. This process in the UK saw the development of the wage-labour system and more broadly of capitalism. This direction towards capitalism was enforced by a state. This is known in Marxian economics as primitive accumulation, the dispossession of property from the masses of small productors and proletarians, for the capitalists. From there we can conclude that the state was an instrument for the development of capitalism. The state's current role in the developed capitalist economy is left to analyze. We can start with a rather simple concept: cronyism. Many libertarians argue that the system we have today isn't Capitalism, but rather cronyism. The warning signs for this were there a hundred years ago but were promptly laughed off as ‘the market could never collaborate against the worker's will and well-being’. However, it is being disproved by the day, with lobbying, the prison and military-industrial complex, imperialism, corporate policies and deregulation pushed by the state, interventions in economic collapses, and so on. Cronyism is not a bad application of capitalism, rather itself in action, that capitalism becomes to protect private property, ensure ever-growing profits and protect the markets from collapsing. We cannot claim "corporatism" to be independent of capitalism if the framework for its development is capitalism.

Diving into Marxist theory, Marx, Engels, and Lenin foresaw and dreaded the collaboration between the bourgeoisie and the state. Lenin analyzed that in Imperialism when he talked about the concentration of finance capital that resulted in its exportation, resulting in the division of the global south between powers. Corporations like the United Fruit Company tied themselves to the state and its actions resulted in the CIA's overthrow of democratically elected socialist governments that were nationalizing the fruit industry to end the exploitation of their working class. We are now dealing with the consequences of this class collaboration as capitalists defend their system by pretending that the market itself did not create it. The nature of Capitalism and the bourgeois state create those conditions, but only one group seeks to address the actual problem. The elimination of class distinctions is the only solution to prevent the crony capitalist system we have. No free market could ever hope of doing something like this. Acknowledging that the system is crony, as a capitalist, is conceding to the Marxist theory of the state. “Cronyism” is inevitable, it is inherent to the nature of capitalism, and a state must come into play to regulate the markets and prevent a collapse. The role of the state is not only to alleviate part of class antagonisms through social programs, price floors and ceilings to protect consumers and producers, to make sure the system itself doesn’t collapse, and to ensure ‘fair’ competition along with safe working conditions.

The bank bailouts of the 2008 recession are a great example of why state interference is necessary for the sustenance of such a system. Even though free markets are theoretically optimal, with supply and demand guided by an ‘invisible hand’ to allocate goods efficiently, they are, in reality, subject to manipulation, artificial inflation of supply or demand depending on the need for short-term profit, misinformation, asymmetries of power & knowledge, and foster extreme wealth inequality. Regulation by the state is aimed at balancing the virtues of free markets against their pitfalls. The concept of the « invisible hand » is also worth looking into, to deconstruct it. This concept was brought into this world by Adam Smith, though only mentioned three times in his entire work, then taken as a dogma, a pillar of modern neoliberalism, the doctrine of automatic efficiency of the market of Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman’s profit maximization and Hayek’s spontaneous order. This is all a gross misrepresentation of Smith’s work, used to justify the privatization of state industries and deregulation. The book « Manipulated » by Thierry Pauchant examines very well how the three metaphors of the invisible hand meant something much different, and were not meant to be taken as a guiding doctrine for the construction of any socio-economic model. 

This distortion of Smith’s work comes from The Wealth of Nations, where he argues that society is guided solely by egoism, which is the engine of the economy. Everyone is motivated by their own self-centred, egotistical interest which encourages them to innovate and to surpass themselves.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but rather from the care they bring to the search for their own interest. We do not defer to their humanity, but to their selfishness.”

From this assertion, Smith draws two conclusions. The first one is that the individual, pursuing his own interest, is guided by an invisible hand in order to achieve a socially desirable goal. Society is therefore a harmony of human characteristics that obey an instinctive force. The second one is that the pursuit of one’s own self-centred interest is not an obstacle to the common good, and brings about societal harmony. This is the theory of harmonization of interests, that was seen in Machiavelli’s The Prince and The Mandrake. But Smith gives a bit of nuance and concedes that sometimes the goal of capitalists is contrary to the common good. Hayek takes the first part of this for himself. He argues that the market is a system thanks to which EVERYONE  has the highest level of income in recorded history. Conveniently ignoring the cost of living, context and any kind of power analysis. We can see the flaw in this thinking when the CEO of General Motors said ‘What is good for General Motors is good for the United States.’ This really hasn’t held true, with automobile-dependent infrastructure destroying the quality of life of millions of Americans and causing an unneeded expense, creating car-dependent suburbia that bankrupts cities and prevents upward mobility for hundreds of thousands of people. At the end of the day, this worldview by Smith should not be taken dogmatically and can be disproven by such examples. He was a man in the 1700s solely analyzing how people operate under capitalism, and building a psychological model to apply to all societies is quite odd. Even with context, the quote seems idealist and devoid of evidence in the material reality.

Going back to the topic, arguing that state intervention in the economy is the reason for economic pitfalls is naive, as the state is the only entity refraining market forces from destroying local economies and fostering even worse inequalities. For example, in the case of housing, there is much necessary state intervention for the well-being of the population. People need housing, and the equilibrium price can be extremely high, like in the case of Quebec. We have understood that and set a price ceiling on rent. This policy artificially decreases supply, effectively creating a disequilibrium, which can be fixed through encouraging densification and mixed-use zoning, or simply building social housing for those who cannot afford artificially inflated market-price rent. Imposing rent-to-own plans could also work wonders for the homeownership rate. 

A similar thing goes for price floors, like in the case of Quebec’s dairy market. We have a quite small one compared to the United States, which wants to export their surplus milk to our grocery shelves. Certainly, this would put thousands of jobs at risk throughout our province, as smaller producers will struggle to compete with huge American multinational corporations. There, state intervention to set a price floor is necessary, as it protects our local economy, and while it at first creates a surplus, there are two ways in which the government can set a new equilibrium price. Either by buying this surplus from the producers and storing it to then sell to consumers during a shortage or by establishing production quotas. The same thing goes for taxi drivers, the minimum wage and the beer industry. State intervention is necessary to negate a few of Capitalism’s flaws. Planning production and establishing quotas is a very important aspect of agriculture, like storing grain in government warehouses, and coordinating production, all to ensure a steady output of crops throughout the years. Regulations on wages, working conditions and pollution are also much necessary and no serious academic except for the fringe Austrian think tanks actually believes we’d be better without them. Firms need to maximize profit on their products, to have a working-class ready to consume what they produce, while paying them as little as possible. This contradiction inherent to capitalism can cause massive issues which are simply solved by price floors, which work for wages since labour is traded in a market and treated as a commodity. Economic regulation guarantees everyone can survive, that factories aren't dumping detritus in rivers, and so on. When pursuing profit, businesses have historically damaged the environment to a great extent, abused labour, violated immigration laws, and scammed consumers out of their hard-earned money. This is why there are state entities in charge of regulating this in the first place. The government is a good institution to perform those tasks, since it has the monopoly on coercion, a military, and institutions in place that can handle keeping businesses in check. Seeing this as tyrannical or as an inefficient unnecessary evil shows a fatal misunderstanding of its role.

In addition, some regulations are essential for competitive businesses. In any scenario, we have regulations, institutions and other entities to limit the excesses of a free market. Businesses constantly complain about these rules, while also lobbying to have other rules changed in their favour to undermine competing firms. The system itself is broken, and the state is the only thing keeping it from completely falling apart, by consolidating its power through concessions to the working class.

It is important to remember that capitalism as an economic system is a stage of development based solely on the pursuit of further profit, with quality of life improvements being accidental products, not inherent to it; the proof being the global collapse of capitalism in 1929 which led to the adoption of Keynesian economic policies: state intervention in the economy & welfare policies to appease the working class and slow down the revealing of contradictions within capitalism giving rise to communist revolutions. The standard of living we have right now in the west is better despite capitalism, not because of it. If we had been working in a different framework like China in the last decades, we would have seen much more advancements in the quality of life, the standard of living as well as state-funded research and development. Standards of living are bound to increase with economic development, industrialization and innovation, to the extent that we do not destroy our mother nature which allows us to have this said quality of life. Industrialization and the constant rise in the level of productivity are not intrinsically linked to capitalism, they exist independent of it. However, this quality of life is currently falling and will continue to fall, as late-stage capitalism exposes its inner contradictions. 

Our incomes are stagnating, not even being indexed, while inflation ever-so increases, social services are being dismantled, nothing concrete is done to curb climate change and the global south is being exploited, with left-wing leaders taking power all over Africa and Latin America. When the inner contradictions of capitalism cause a final economic collapse, the most vulnerable people will become homeless and lose their jobs because the economy is not treated as a political facet of the state. There needs to be a certain framework to support those said people with basic necessities, education and healthcare. In other words, we let markets ‘regulate’ themselves with minimal intervention or framing to protect workers and consumers, which is very dangerous and will most likely cause the collapse of capitalism. This is most likely why a lot of billionaires advocate for policies like UBI, to protect capitalism and further their profits while keeping their wages low.

Private ownership and its inevitable concentrations of capital ultimately consolidate power and freedom around a select few, as shown earlier. The profit motive has been corrosive to social cohesion and civil society in its amplification of individualist materialism and rewarding egotistical behaviour.

It runs deeper than that, in a 1997 study Yakovenko showed that even if you create some sort of libertarian, laissez-faire capitalist society from the ground up, starting everyone out with the same amount of money and no special property rights, it will lead to an exponential distribution of wealth, where the wealthy tail can command large amounts of labour to generate a snowball effect in their favour. We would always see wealth distribution shifted towards the top 0.1%. These outcomes are inherent to capitalism. 

The lie of Voluntaryism

This brings me to voluntaryism. It is crucial to understand that voluntary contracts can still be coercive, exploitative and oppressive if there is no alternative except to submit to them. The so-called « illusion of false choice». In a free market, nothing is standing in the course of the capital owners, effectively enslaving the workers in precisely this voluntary fashion. This removes freedom and opportunity for everyone who shows up late to the party, or is left at large. Multi-generationally, this generates great wealth inequality.

Now, say you're born on an island that a small group of people own. These landlords require you to pay rent to live on that land. Since they have a monopoly on employment, you don't have a choice but to work for them. Since there is no state, they do not have an obligation to allow any form of competition on their private property. No one is directly forcing you to stay on the island, but building a boat and escaping could be pretty precarious, and they might not sell you the materials needed for this journey, and private law enforcement with no guiding principles but the profit motive might stop you from doing so. 

In a real-life example, we can compare the idealized view of capitalism pushed by Milton Friedman and reality. According to Friedman, concurrency protects the consumer from the coercion a seller could have on him, and vice versa. The seller of labour-power is on the same foot of equality as the buyer, and they are both linked by a voluntary and free contract where any form of constraint is absent. Any and all are free to participate or not in the exchange « because there are other employers ». 

The Senegalese peasant and the textile factory worker have the same power as a multinational corporation and a voluntary agreement to exchange labour-power for a wage, which explains that an Indonesian worker touches 0.2% of the value of a Nike shoe he produces. This is one of many examples of power being a key factor in the « level of consent » given by any market actor. Of course, corporations will have more power, and this power imbalance will only decrease if workers unionize and pressure this firm into making concessions.

To continue, we need to analyze the flaws of Friedman’s thinking. The economy presents a very complex structure, with the market allocating factors of production and regulating itself, like a thermostat which constantly adjusts itself. Ironically enough, this thermostat metaphor has nothing to do with capitalism and I have taken it from Paul Cockshott’s Toward a New Socialism where he explains input-output tables constantly adjusting to find production targets in a socialist economy. I believe this is sufficient to understand that the metaphors used by capitalist ideologues are not reflected in reality and are not consistent with it.

This talk about constantly adjusting targets brings me to the idea of magically optimized markets achieving perfect equilibrium every time. The proof of this shown by Pareto ironically shows the fatal flaw of the ‘free markets’, that they assume equilibrium under perfect competition optimizes production and allocates actors in an optimal way, when perfect competition does not exist, only as an abstraction in the head of economists, who do nothing but spend their entire life trying to justify the existence of capitalism. But I digress. 

This theory supposes that equilibrium prices on a market are known in advance by all its actors, that all enterprises in a given industry are small, of the same size, produce an identical product, that all agents are completely rational and that there is no barrier to entry. Unsurprisingly, this is impossible to recreate in the material reality and is a completely idealized view of markets, and many economists have conceded that markets are, in reality, flawed. This is why they separated markets into different categories. Perfect, imperfect, monopolist and oligopolistic. They on one hand realize the need for these changes but still cling to old abstractions to continue justifying these inefficient markets. This belief in a supposed efficient market and pure concurrency is a myth. In reality, examples like those shown above are everywhere in markets; hyper-competition between huge firms to gain power and prevent competitors from entering the market happens all the time. The economic law that is said to govern capitalism is also one of its inner contradictions: the role of the market is to eliminate the idealized market to maximize profits through exploitation, destruction of competition, fraud, and so on. Markets breed inequality and the so-called ‘voting mechanism’ pushed by economics textbooks conveniently ignores that this breeds overproduction of luxury goods and weapons for the rich and powerful, rather than actual beneficial goods and services. Such an uneven power dynamic breeds coercion, exploitation and economic inequality.

Consent

This analysis of the power dynamic brings us to consent to exploitation. Under Capitalism, labour-power is viewed as a commodity, which can be bought or sold like anything else. Libertarians argue that workers can sell that labour power without being subject to force or coercion through a contractual agreement. However, most of the time, it's simply not the case. This is like saying a child can consent to sex with a pedophile, without coercion, completely disregarding the age gap and causing an uneven power dynamic. The market agents are not receiving according to their work or needs. In capitalist theory, the property is a sacred extension of yourself, to be used only according to your personal preference. It pushes an idea of 'natural law,' that man is entitled to 'life, liberty and estate. ' From this, we can assume that no one can take another person's life, freedom or property, and that property can only be exchanged if bought or sold consensually. 

The worker "consents" to his exploitation because he is coerced or indoctrinated. Just because the coercion is not physical doesn't make it any less coercive. For your consent to have a meaning, you must be able to retract it. Agreeing to this contract also means being able to withdraw it later on. But in a capitalist system, to retract your consent, you need to have a private property to sustain yourself. Otherwise, you won't be able to subsist on your basic needs. If you don't retract your consent, it just means the force of circumstance coerces you to agree to this contract. Capitalism's premise is this exploitative reality. The very existence of capitalists depends on the fact that most workers can't say no to a job for fear of not having the ability to fulfill their basic needs. Most of the time the wage is not even up for negotiation either. It is essential to recognize that simply because in one case a worker is satisfied with a contract that pays them a ton of money and fulfills them, therefore consenting to exploitation, does not mean the same thing happens in other cases, let alone the majority of the population. In Capitalism, most relations are exploitative and unjust.

Put shortly, this "agreement to exploitation" is pretty much just semantics to justify ways in which corporations manufacture consent. Why would you care about providing your employees with bearable working conditions if you can convince them to use your company's car? I don't see the trend of companies indirectly forcing their workers with "advantages" to be addressed by laissez-faire. In short, arguing that Capitalism is not coercive because you consent to be exploited" is missing the point entirely and shows a surface-level misunderstanding of how Capitalism works.

Non-Aggression Principle

This brings me to the non-aggression principle. According to Ronald Hamowy: The nonaggression axiom is an ethical principle often appealed to as a basis for libertarian rights theory. The principle forbids “aggression,” which is understood to be any and all forcible interference with any individual's person or property except in response to the initiation (including, for most proponents of the principle, the threatening of initiation) of similar forcible interference on the part of that individual.

From there, we can understand that the NAP is composed of two principles. The first one is that you cannot initiate forceful interference with someone’s person or property, and the second is that you have the right to defend yourself from someone initiating said forceful interference. On a surface level, this is not necessarily wrong and might seem like a good principle to use as an axiom. However, look past this surface level and its flaws practically show themselves. Libertarians often hypothesize an idealized worldview that is very often in a vacuum. Let’s get back to what we Marxists love, material reality.

My first criticism goes as follows: the profit motive, which is a key aspect of Capitalism, incentivizes actions that violate the Non-Aggression Principle. With the NAP that most libertarians advocate for, firms would be much less incentivized to maximize their profits. It’s a contradictory thought. It’s also completely idealistic since outsourcing labour and production to the global south would happen on a much larger scale. Firms already do this, with many of them setting up plants to exploit resources on indigenous territories, and disregarding those people’s sovereignty over their own territory. These companies hold so much power that they can basically disregard any attempt at recognition by indigenous people. The profit motive pushes companies like Nestle and Coca-Cola to steal water sources in the global south for the sake of beverage production.

It would also be easy for a large corporation to effectively enslave a population of workers to save money on wages, and provide cheaper products as well as undercutting the competition of goods produced more ethically by other firms. The most ruthless businesses win, and those who act more ethically will lose money and fall in the market rankings. Therefore, market forces incentivize more slavery and destruction, not less, to stay competitive. Laissez-faire brings about immense amounts of coercion. It lets corporations rule over a town and use coercive means such as a private militia to take over land and establish a monopoly on everything we need. Though, the NAP is much more about the protection of private property than actual aggression or violation of rights. This is illustrated by the next element, private courts. For private courts to work, they must have a degree of force and a monopoly on coercion to back up their rulings. In a completely voluntary society, what if the business owner doesn't show up to court? After all, you can't force them to as doing so will violate the non-aggression principle. Then, wouldn't a business this controversial have a well-trained private security force to protect its boss? In other words, without a state, you can only punish an individual if they voluntarily go to court, which they won't do. The profit motive also eradicates the idea of private courts. If I were the CEO of this huge corporation that acts immorally, would I pay more money to make the company ethical, or would I spend less money in order to bribe the largest private courts so they will always rule in my favour? It’s very clear that they will gain from letting me get away with immoral practices, it’s a win-win situation for the oppressors. Private courts are a very implausible proposition, they are far from an effective truth, an axiom. Privatizing institutions like the police and courts would lead to a situation where entire privatized governments exist, with some people within the same community potentially subscribing to different ones. Laissez-faire is a rejection of the public state in favour of multiple, private ‘states’. It’s pretty obvious that would easily shift the power to those big companies, who will always rule in their own favour, effectively negating the non-aggression principle. Corruption, mismanagement, violent coercion and many more problems would arise. Paired with private property, you’ve just recreated Feudalism!

Liberty

Last but not least, liberty. This concept is very abstract, and has multiple different meanings depending on context and application, with 250 different definitions. First, economic liberty is in contradiction with values like equality and the right to life if a capitalist can put pressure on salaries, to organize productive forces as he wishes, including making his workers work in unsafe conditions. On one hand, liberty needs to be restricted for it not to impede other people's liberty, and on another hand, it is just one out of many important values which can restrict it, such as love, justice, equality, and happiness. Many of these are not really objectively quantifiable. Individual liberty is therefore an odd thing to have as a primary value. 

“Liberty is the foundation of all else”

This John Locke quote sets the foundation for liberalism, a philosophy where private property and liberty are inextricably connected. Any attempt at redistribution or abolition of private property is seen as an attack on liberty. According to Hayek, political and social liberty depend on economic liberty, that is the right to private property. Liberty is therefore subordinated to Capital, in neoliberal doctrine it can thus be defined as the removal of barriers to profit maximization for the concentration of finance capital in the hands of capitalists. But how exactly did Hayek define liberty? According to him, being free is being able to choose « the means and the end of his activities », so being free of constraint. There is a constraint where another individual imposes his will on another person’s activities. From this we can assert that Hayek defined liberty as auto-determination, being able to choose one’s own path without being submitted to another’s will.

But ironically enough, Hayek then does a 180 and « excommunicates » another liberal for defining liberty that way. Because defining it that way would contradict the nature of capitalism, which actively works against said self-determination of oppressed nations. Instead, he defines it as disposing of a protected domain where no other person can intervene in the measure where he respects the law. It would have nothing to do with power. Property. If liberty is property, and liberty is the foundation of everything, property is everything. The sole guiding principle of libertarianism. As seen earlier, this is quite problematic considering the tyrannical nature of private property which seeks to alienate those submitted to it to pursue further profit.

But no matter how we define liberty, it can easily be divided into 2 aspects. Negative and positive liberty. Negative liberty means the absence of something, freedom from. Positive liberty on the other hand means the presence of something, like the right to self-determination. Freedom to. 

To quote Marx: 

“Man is free not by the negative force to avoid something, but by the positive force to assert his true invididuality” (THE SAINT FAMILY, P.157-158)

A better understanding of liberty would use this citation by Marx: capital keeps man from self-realization: it imposes its scenario on every individual and controls his life decisions, in the pursuit of profit. Only the abolition of capital and unnecessary work will make man free, as it eliminates the distinction between labour and leisure, humanizes production and makes careers socially beneficial. This right to self-determination hypothesized by liberals means nothing when it doesn’t include the right to participate in any decision-making process: under capitalism, the decisions are made by those alienated from the production process: bureaucrats, investors, and directors. The allocation of resources, the faith of a shop, the education and health systems, all these decisions are not in the hands of the people in capitalism. Liberty needs to extend to the economic and social aspect, not as in the capitalist sense of freedom of business and private property, but instead in the freedom of participation and of owning the fruits of one’s labour. People need to have a right to self-realization; in a free market, most do not have startup capital. Everyone needs to have equal access to means to realize themselves: equality of opportunity. These rights and liberties exist under capitalism but are kept from the masses, only given to capitalists.

Freedom can also not exist without a sense of community. The individual lacking a broader community will not only feel alienated but will lack resources in a potential downfall. Without a strong, healthy community, there is no strong individual. Collaboration rather than competition brings about more fulfillment and self-realization, and is evidently more deserving of the label of liberty.

Furthermore, Hayek and other ultra liberals are quite against democracy, preferring to limit political liberty in the hands of capital owners, to ‘optimize the free market’. This is exactly how neoliberalism works: a military dictatorship is installed, political and economic liberties are limited while the state represses dissent to the free-market ideology, while the welfare state’s services are privatized. This not only breeds inequality and alienation from political, economic and social spheres of life, but it restricts the freedom it logically comes to.

Appeal and Conclusion

In conclusion, free-market capitalism is unviable, and more broadly, it is not a good way to organize productive forces. Let’s summarise our findings. The first contention is that unregulated capitalism has been elaborately constructed with the collaboration of the state through policies of expropriation, and that it trends towards monopolization of very few firms, inevitably towards imperialism. The state and the market are therefore intertwined and cannot be separated. This also rules out any question of corporatism or cronyism, since the organization of productive forces, the framework which allows this to take place is capitalism. Then, that state intervention and regulation are inevitable and absolutely necessary for preventing the collapse of the market system. Following this, capitalism depends on private property, which is impossible to protect without a state. Any notion of anarcho-capitalism is ruled out and only neoliberal states like what we’ve seen in Chile with Pinochet stay. Finally, that right-wing libertarianism has completely distorted the notions of consent, exploitation, the human condition and efficiency, conveniently disregarding negative externalities, to justify their positions. If someone wants to argue that the market regulates itself, they need to take a look at history, where the most laissez-faire periods of capitalist history quickly led to monopolies and extreme exploitation, which is still happening today in the third world, the global south, which libertarians also conveniently ignore because the child slaves aren’t white. Then, its real-world applications have led to massive wealth and income inequality, privatization of social services leading to a lack of an adequate quality of life, and disastrous social impacts in its neoliberal applications in military dictatorships in countries like Chile in 1973. Finally, it distorts the concept of liberty, strips it of its actual meaning, devoid of any social, political or economic implications and asserts private property and the market as absolutes.

The only reason libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism have some sort of following apart from profit and corporate propaganda is because of their simplicity. It’s most prominent in the US, followed by Canada, Brazil and Australia. It barely exists in other countries, even less oppressed countries victims of moribund, capitalism-imperialism. No wonder countries like Argentina don’t have very prominent libertarian parties. Its main trait is simplicity; The state is bad, and Capitalism is good. You need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, despise poor people and work hard! It doesn’t really dive any deeper into societal issues other than making general statements that most people can agree on: ”Taxation sucks, ”Having things stolen from you sucks”, and ”You have the right to defend yourself”. Sure, there’s anarcho-capitalist and libertarian theory that people can dive into to explain these concepts, but analyzing it shows just how idealist and disconnected from reality it is.

This contrasts a lot with anarchism, a complicated school of thought resting on centuries of theory and analysis of egalitarian societies. Libertarians say ”taxation is theft” because the government is taking the money you earned without your consent - anarchists would agree with this statement, however for anarchists that agreement is based on the theory of property being theft, and that ownership of property does not justify extraction of wealth from workers; just because the state owns its territory it does not mean it’s justified in taxing those who use that territory; taxation is theft. If you view taxation as theft, it seems pretty contradictory not to view private property and surplus value as theft too. This simplicity really serves this ideology where it’s the most prominent, the US, as Americans tend to be quite simple in their political thought and stay at a surface level of knowledge, ignoring most issues. The average American wants their property safe and their taxes low. They also do not usually have a great knowledge of the variety of political ideas, having lived in a two-party system where both parties are, for the most part, identical compared to the vast ideological differences found in “democracies”. They’re also not really taught what other political ideas exist in school. Notably because of the red scare, American schools teach very biased political ideas and a lot of misinformation & propaganda, to create a docile working class composed of intellectually deprived individuals.

Most libertarians seem to have arrived at their positions from the starting position of ”I just want to be left alone”, which is a respectable position, but it’s very simplistic. This contrasts with socialism, where the most common starting position is ”class divisions suck”, which is quite a complicated position, and touches on hierarchy, race, gender, institutions, power and exploitation. It’s a much more complicated and thoroughly developed school of thought. It’s just so much easier for a libertarian to get their ideas across, and that is attractive to people who want a simple solution without feeling like a « doomer ». When you dive into libertarian theory, you find that it remains simplistic and idealist. Whereas socialist writers propose a revolution overthrowing the state followed by years of revolutionary restructurings of society, libertarian writers like Larken Rose propose ”If we stop pretending that the government exists, it will cease to exist. ” It doesn’t take much reasoning to realize how idealistic this claim is. Its simplicity is to its credit. It makes for an idea that’s easy to spread amongst people looking for a simple answer, and those people will hold on to that answer. That’s how people work, and it makes this ideology along with neoliberalism pretty sad to see have a following. To end on a good note, it is absolutely unviable and the inner contradictions of capitalism will cause it to collapse. Have a good one.

Zwolinski, M. (2016). THE LIBERTARIAN NONAGGRESSION PRINCIPLE. Social Philosophy and Policy, 32(2), 62-90. doi:10.1017/S026505251600011X

St-Onge, J. (2017). L’imposture néolibérale: Marché, Liberté et Justice sociale. 

David Graeber's Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (2004)

Yakovenko, V., Cottrell, A. F., Cockshott, P., Michaelson, G. J., & Wright, I. P. (2009). Classical Econophysics (P. Cockshott, Ed.). Taylor & Francis.

Agarwal, P. (2022, February 2). Free Market. Intelligent Economist. 

Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism. (n. d. ). Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. https://en-academic. com/dic. nsf/enwiki/2865498

Ever since the industrial revolution of the 1800s, cases of mental health issues have kept steadily rising, as we reach an era of late-stage Capitalism, where the system has fully consolidated itself. From the anxiety of the current economic system, social alienation and depression from constant competition, Capitalism has immeasurable impacts on the wellbeing of individuals. Let’s look at the effects of hyperindividualism, the system’s anxiety and overworking, on the mental health conditions of the working class in this world of neoliberal, crony capitalism that incentivises people to work in submissive ways that seem to be against their free, egalitarian, social and creative nature.

  First and foremost, the development of a capitalist society has seen mental illness to be classified as one of the biggest reasons for distress and misery across individuals. According to the Hampton Institute, “One in four people in the UK today have been diagnosed with a mental illness, and four million people take antidepressants every year”. Evidence heavily correlated this ‘epidemic of mental illness’ with social and economic determinants of capitalism and wealth inequality. 

Let’s then observe the alienation of workers from their labour: many are the people who feel alienated from their labour; dissociated from it, with the feeling that they do not actually contribute to the improvement of society; that they are worthless. The consistent increase in specialisation and in the separation of labour has caused nearly 87% of global workers to not feel engaged with the work they do. Study after study shows that more pay doesn’t mean a happier life, but it’s your engagement and if you feel you are helping the community that makes a truly happy working experience. capitalism rewards crazed behaviours. This isn’t even some far-lefty conspiracy, nearly 20 percent of all CEOs according to forensic psychologist Nathan Brooks from Bond University found 21 percent of 261 corporated professionals had clinically significant psychopathic traits. This is what capitalism is and rewards. As a species we are better than this. Allowing people to do labour of which they feel engaged with, regardless of economic fears, will create a more productive and happier society.

Evidently, higher wages do not usually mean higher fulfilment and satisfaction; the field, the interest of the worker and the engagement do. Capitalism rewards individuals for entering fields they loathe, simply because the wages are more attractive. Furthermore, people working in factories are completely alienated from the product they are making, only creating part of a final object that will end up consumed by an individual who regards the work behind it with philistinism. Capitalism inserts itself in the existence of people, we start selling our labour-power like commodities, becoming one ourselves, from our early teens until we retire at an age where life is not as enjoyable.

Then, hustle culture pushed by capitalists wrecks individuals - the idea that hating your boss and working 60 hours is just part of the hustle, a way to happiness - making them think that constantly overworking themselves for the financial benefit of a Capitalist is a good and rewarding thing. We think we’re doing just fine, however as Finn Mungovan put it in a document I lost track of: ‘Capitalism exploits the inner sadomasochist that dwells in us.’ It is self-evident that capitalism destroys the mental well-being of its victims.

Others feel the disparities in wealth, inequality, and social isolation caused by this crony system. Capitalism, being based on competition between individuals, incentivises people to measure themselves against others, falling victims to greed and the constant need for more. Philosopher Karl Marx proposed that this feeling is not natural; it comes from the economic and social system [capitalism]. Under an egalitarian system, people do not feel this constant anxiety caused by the market forces. When a person works for their own self-centred interest, to receive what little wage the capitalist agrees to pay them, they are not as fulfilled as if they worked, let’s say, for their community in exchange for its other members’ goods and services. The system itself makes it so individuals of the working class see their peers as threats or enemies, rather than comrades, people they can work with. We constantly compare ourselves to the rich and powerful, even though the rate of upwards mobility has kept steadily declining since 1985. Our mere existence is measured by economic success rather than the abilities; the skills we possess. 

Furthermore, it is important to note that Capitalism is a system built on a contradiction. To be specific, it is a contradiction of classes, caught in irreconcilable antagonisms that the ‘social-democrat’ state claims to alleviate. The producers, or proletariat, who allow society to function and produce the value of which we consume have no say over their actual production, caught in a system where democracy isn’t extended to their workplace. This system is built upon a distrust of the worker and the idea that they, and their labour can be bought and sold as any commodity. We are fundamentally better than that. Our labour power is an embodiment of our ability, our capacity to create and shape our own needs. This is what separates us from any other animal, thus our ability to produce should be celebrated, not alienated. The increased specialisation, overproduction, and automation under Capitalism do not only create economic issues, but they destroy humanity itself. Our ability to produce shouldn’t be exploited simply in favour of a profit. 

Following through with this idea, it is quite easy to realise how these feelings breed inequality, which in turn causes massive impacts on the mental wellbeing of the members of society. As the Royal College of Psychologists reports: ‘Inequality is a major determinant of mental illness: the greater the level of inequality, the worse the health outcomes. Children from the poorest households have a three-fold greater risk of mental ill health than children from the richest households. Mental illness is consistently associated with deprivation, low income, unemployment, poor education, poorer physical health and increased health-risk behaviour.’ Capitalism is destructive of the individual. The reality of the individual is based on the reality of his community: a member of a poorer community will most likely end up the same way. This system makes us live ‘wrongly’, with bad incentives, rewarding unhealthy behaviour that goes against our social nature. It is thus clear that the socio-economic system we live under, being capitalism, is responsible for the surge in mental illness we observe today. When the basic needs of people are not met because of the not so ‘free’ markets, mental health is sure to become an issue. Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy pointed out that the consequences of capitalism have huge effects on mental health: ‘The system fails to provide the foundations of a society capable of promoting the healthy and happy development of its members’.

Then, let’s observe commodity fetishism and consumerism. Humans naturally use nature to create products that help them accomplish certain tasks. We attribute a use-value to these items depending on their usefulness, However, with capitalism comes a different mentality. We work simply to acquire products, eventually becoming dissatisfied with them and getting the newer model. It is a perpetual pathologic behaviour that is observed across most individuals. We are alienated from the commodity, and fetishise it because of this contradictory system that works to degrade society. 

       Finally, the psychopathology of capitalism works not only to destroy the individual, but also presents itself as a great system that incentivises a push for growth and innovation. Famous political theorist Mark Fisher noted that ‘It is not an exaggeration that being a teenager in a late stage capitalist world is now close to being reclassified as a sickness, By privatising these issues [...], any question of systemic causation of these problems is ruled out’. Capitalism has huge impacts that aren’t even attributed to it, making any change in the system that much harder. 

Fisher pointed out that ‘even ten minutes is a luxury the day-labourer cannot afford’, we live under conditions that neglect mental health, and give us less time than necessary to plan ahead, establish routines or even surf between the roles that were established for working class people. Mental health always has been and will continue to be an issue until this system is overthrown, in favour of something less anxious and able to provide for its citizens: socialism.

All those previous elements are bad, but what's even worse is the mindset we have towards this situation. Let's talk about the concept of capitalist realism. Fisher makes the argument that the war on terror has prepared us for an authoritarian development, where the normalisation of the crisis brings about a situation where repealing measures brought in to deal with emergencies become unimaginable. The following paragraphs were written by tiktoker neo.gerald when condensing the whole book into a small essay. I then expanded on it, adding my own thoughts.

The idea of Capitalist Realism is the widespread notion and sense that capitalism is the only viable economic system, and that imagining an alternative to it is now impossible. It presents itself as a shield protecting us from danger. This functions to lower our standards because the current state of affairs is totally just a ‘small price to pay to avoid terror and totalitarianism’ -- we disregard the development of authoritarianism in our society.

Fisher points out that we live in an unequal society, in which our existence is evaluated solely by money, by our ability to succeed financially. This is completely against our ‘human nature’, yet it is painted as an ideal. To justify this, conservatives and liberals don’t paint the system as an ideal, magnificent one. Rather they paint any alternative as evil and terrible.

To quote the book: “Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect goodness. But we’re lucky that we don’t live in a condition of Evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it’s better than those bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it’s not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don’t make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our Airplanes, but we don’t cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda etc.”

In short, it is a sad reality, but there is a widespread notion that the system we live under today, a system of authoritarian capitalism, is the only viable one, and everything else is an evil, bloody dictatorship.

Fisher then expands on capitalist realism. He describes it as a pervasive atmosphere that acts as an invisible barrier restricting thought and action. Fisher asks, if capitalist realism is so prevalent, and if current forms of resistance are so hopeless, where can effective challenges come from? A moral critique of capitalism that argues it always leads to suffering, only reinforces capitalist realism. Poverty, famine, war, inequality, hierarchies, exploitation, and all its other issues can then be presented as an inevitable part of reality. Any hope to end this is painted as ‘naive’ or ‘utopian’.

Psychoanalysis’s idea of the reality principle invites us to be suspicious of any reality that presents itself as natural, Fisher argues. The reality principle (in Freudian psychoanalysis it can be simply defined as “the ability of the mind to assess the reality of the external world, and to act upon it accordingly”) is itself brought about ideologically. It is the highest form of ideology precisely because it presents itself as empirical fact or necessity.

For Lacan, the real is what any ‘reality’ must suppress. ‘The real is an unpresentable X ’, a thing that can only be seen through inconsistencies in our apparent reality. The real is that which is real or true. Reality is what presents itself as real. Fisher uses environmental catastrophe as an example of a real. Although climate change and the threat of resource depletion are not being repressed, they are incorporated into advertising and marketing. Capitalist realism relies on this treatment of environmental catastrophe; the idea that resources are infinite and that any problem can be fixed by the market or ‘innovation’. The relationship between capitalism and environmental disaster is neither coincidental or accidental. Due to capital’s constant need to expand its markets and its “growth fetish”, capitalism is, by its very nature, opposed to any notion of sustainability. Yet firms advertise

Let’s then look at the behaviour of different groups facing this neoliberal dystopia. Compared to people in the 1960s and 1970s, British students appear to be politically disengaged. While French students can be seen protesting against neoliberalism, British students seem to have accepted their fate. This is not out of apathy or cynicism but rather reflexive impotence. They know  the system works against them, but they also know they can’t do anything about it.

Depression is endemic. It is the condition most dealt with by the NHS and it is afflicting more and more people at increasingly younger ages. Fisher says it is not an exaggeration that being a teenager in late stage Capitalism Britain is now close to being reclassified as a sickness.

By privatising these issues; treating them like they are caused by factors that have nothing to do with their actual causations, any question of systemic causation of these problems is ruled out. The problem is Capitalism, yet we don’t acknowledge it, for the system is seen as the only viable ideology.

In The Selfish Capitalist, Oliver James points to the significant rises in the rates of mental distress over the last 25 years.-

“Rates of distress almost doubled between people born in 1946 (aged 36 in 1982) and 1970 (aged 30 in 2000). For example, 16% of 36 year old women in 1982 reported having trouble with nerves, feeling low, depressed or sad, whereas 29% of thirty year olds reported this in 2000 (for men it was 8% in 1982, 13% in 2000).”

Oliver James also cites compared levels of psychiatric morbidity of samples from 1977 and 1985. Since the rates of psychiatric morbidity (22% of the 1977 sample increased to 31% of the sample by 1986) were much higher in countries James considers to have implemented ‘selfish capitalism’ compared to other capitalist nations, he hypothesised that neoliberalism capitalist policies and cultures are to blame.

He argues that selfish capitalism contributes to this ‘entrepreneurial fantasy society’ in which anyone can be Bill Gates or Alan Sugar (despite the fact that the likelihood of this actually occurring has decreased since the 1970s as upward mobility through education has actually decreased since 1958 for example). The thing most poisonous about selfish capitalism and harmful to wellbeing, Fisher argues, is the ‘systematic encouragement’ that material affluence or wealth is the key to fulfilment, that only the rich and affluent are winners and that anyone has access  to/can make it to the top as long as they are willing to ‘work hard enough’, regardless of their familial, ethnic, or social background. You are to blame if you do not succeed.

The ruling class ontology (concepts and ideas ) denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The ‘chemico-biologization’ of mental illness is in proportion to its depoliticisation. Considering mental illness as an individual issue with someone's brain chemistry has enormous benefits for capitalism: First, it reinforces capitalism's drive towards individualisation (you are sick because of your brain chemistry); Second, it provides a profitable market for multinational pharmaceutical companies.

If it is true that depression is caused by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation. If the left wants to challenge capitalist realism we must re-politicize mental illness. Pharmaceutical companies love to provide a ‘fix’ for the issue, and pointing out one of the symptoms, but never the root cause of the problem.

How does neoliberalism, a project that empties the world of meaning, cheapens life, and openly exploits desire, intersect with neoconservatism, which is centred on fixing and enforcing meanings, conserving certain ways of life and repressing and regulating desire? How does support for governance modelled on the firm and a social fabric based on self interest (neoliberalism) marry support for governance modelled on church authority and a social fabric based on self sacrifice and familial loyalty (neoconservatism)?

Fisher hypotheses that what synthesised neoliberalism and neoconservatism was their ‘shared objects of abomination’: the Nanny state and the people who depend on it. Despite pushing an anti-statist rhetoric, neoliberalism in practice is not necessarily opposed to the state (as the bank bailouts in 2008 showed) but rather to particular uses of state funds. Meanwhile, the neoconservatism strong state was confined to military and police functions and defined itself against a welfare state.

The concept of the Nanny State continues to haunt capitalist realism. Fisher argues that governments are often blamed precisely for its Failure to act as a centralising power or authority. To quote:

“Conservative and Labour governments have discovered that when they give powers to private companies, and those private companies screw up , voters blame the government for giving the powers away rather than the companies misusing them”

Fisher argues that the effects of late stage capitalism are fear and cynicism (the belief that people are motivated entirely by self interest). He says this breeds conformity and stunts entrepreneurial leaps. There is minimal variation as companies simply turn out products that closely resemble what has already been successful (so much for innovation).

Despite initial hopes, the 2008 financial crisis did not undermine capitalism. Speculations that capitalism was on the verge of collapse proved to be wrong. Fisher argues that the exact opposite occurred. The bank bailouts were a reassertion of the capitalist realist idea that there is no alternative. Allowing the banking system to fail was deemed unthinkable, and what occurred after was the vast accumulation of public money into private hands.

However, 2008 did show the collapse of the framework (neoliberalism) that provided ideological cover for capitalist accumulation since the 1970s. But neoliberalism assumptions still continue to dominate the political economy. Fisher says the crisis led to the “relaxing of a certain kind of mental paralysis”. A space has been created for a new anti-capitalism to emerge that is not necessarily tied to old language or traditions.

To quote Fisher “The failure of previous forms of anti-capitalist political organisation should not be a cause for despair, but what needs to be left behind is a certain romantic attachment to politics of failure…”

Nothing is inherently political. Politicisation requires political agents to transform what is accepted and taken for granted into something that is ‘up for grabs’. Neoliberalism triumphed by taking on the desires of the post 68 working class. A new left or anti-capitalist movement could begin by building on desires neoliberalism has created but has been unable to satisfy. Fisher suggests we should argue what neoliberalism failed to do: a massive reduction of bureaucracy, worker ownership and autonomy (democracy in the workplace), and the rejection of excessive auditing in workplaces.

“The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.

I can easily draw parallels from Fisher’s work to those of Étienne de La Boétie, a french writer from the 16th century. In his essay ‘Discours de la servitude volontaire’, he shows his surprise observing how millions of men willingly submit themselves to a tyrant, and then develops the idea of ‘voluntary servitude’, the manifestation of the lack of distinction between the misfortune of a submission imposed from the outside and the vice of a voluntary subjection, consented to because of the lack of desire for freedom. In short, serving a tyrant in the hope that things will one day change.

In the United States, we find ourselves with citizens who are at war between two right-wing authoritarian parties who are both bought by gigantic corporations, and they act accordingly. It's a very sad reality, but even the people aware of their oppression by the system seem to have given up, not out of cynicism but because they know they can't really do anything about it. La Boétie said a very similar thing: the enslaved people endure misfortune with patience, and reserve themselves for a better, distant future. After this reflection, it is easy to imagine that this attitude was present at the time.

Then, La Boétie suggests getting out of the habit in order to get rid of a tyrant. He proposes something approaching civil disobedience; the people just have to stop serving the tyrant. Not active rebellion, but perpetual inaction until the tyrant falls. According to him, the people must come out of their denaturation and want themselves to be free. 

It is clear that we live in a moribund, capitalist dystopia and escaping our tyrant, capital, will prove to be a very hard challenge. I really hope we'll one day get there, for the well being of society and its citizens. 

Let us now look at monopolies; concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands. Natural monopolies occur even if there is no government. And once those monopolies arise, there is no more extended competition, and the advantages of a free market evaporate. Private property is tyrannically oppressive to liberty, the limiting of the world to first-come, first-serve opportunists effectively eliminates freedom and opportunity for everyone who shows up late. Multi-generationally, this breeds capricious inequity, especially if children can inherit what they haven't earned. The same is true of wealth accumulation and its power relationship. 

Private ownership and its inevitable concentrations of capital ultimately consolidate power and freedom around a select few. The centralization of capital is one of the main characteristics of capitalism. Lenin talked about that in his book ‘Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism’. It is not only natural to the system, but necessary to its development. With monopolistic competition inevitably comes the formation of monopolies and oligopolies. Throughout the years we have seen a shift in competition, where there used to be many firms offering services and having a similar market share, we now see immense multinationals owning practically entire markets, having eliminated the competition. We now see the supposed benefits of Capitalism literally eroding, being the possibility of starting a business, having variety in product choices, and the list goes on. A great example of this happening is the 6 companies owning 90% of the media in the US, offering the same pro-status-quo takes. The profit motive has been predictably corrosive to social cohesion and civil society in its amplification of individualist materialism, and a pathological desire for rewards. It's just not a good idea to rely on the profit motive to sustain a civilised society. 

This leads me to talk about imperialism more clearly. Lenin defined it as “moribund capitalism”, a stage of development where it is on its deathbed. More and more monopolisation. It manifests itself as:

1.  Cartels; associations of oligarch corporations that are used to destroy competition;

2. Concentration of capital in the hands of a few, very influent banks;

3. Exportation of capital abroad;

4. Economic repartition of the world between capitalist powers.

It also evolves or rather ‘devolves’ into exploitation of the proletariat in the global south, for further profit maximisation and consolidation of capital in the entire world. This exploitation of oppressed nations by a handful of imperialist capitalist powers transforms the capitalist world into a parasite that feeds off the labour of billions of people.

Imperialism also exists as the prevention of self-determination of nations, or rather in the distortion of that term by imperialists, using it as an excuse to give only cultural autonomy, and keep political power in the hands of the imperialists. Nations need recognition to become fully independent and free from capitalist exploitation.

As Stalin put it in The Foundations of Leninism:

“Leninism broadened the conception of self-determination, interpreting it as the right of the oppressed people of the dependent countries and colonies to complete secession, as the right of nations to independent existence as states. This precluded the possibility of justifying annexatiuons by interpreting the right to self-determination as the right to autonomy.”

As long as oppressed nations stay servient to capitalist exploitative nations, the global hegemony will be capitalism imperialism.

The first material problems that arise with Capitalism are the poor quality of products and the mass destruction of the environment, both related to profit maximisation. The main motive of all production is profit. Corporations seek to satisfy the demands of the market, all the while minimising their expenses, neglecting many factors that could improve the quality and lifespan of their products. It is one of the many contradictions within Capitalism, along with paying the working class a good wage to buy their products, versus cutting wages to maximise profits. It is also part of the reason economic crises are so common in this system.

Take for example the case of planned obsolescence with Apple. A problem arises where they make their product too good for consumers to switch to a new one every year, so they rely on software that hogs older devices, and building them with worse-quality parts to shorten the lifespan of their products. 

The same thing happened to the lightbulb industry with the Phoebus cartel. Firms were producing lightbulbs of high quality that lasted way too long, meaning they had to reduce the lifespan of their products to maintain their rate of profit and competition. Producing extremely long lasting light bulbs was completely possible, but multiple firms stepped in and formed a cartel to prevent that from being realised. It’s quite simple: if a firm started manufacturing high-quality light bulbs with quasi-eternal lifespans, such as Thomas Edison’s eternal light bulb, the consumer base would completely or almost vanish after a few years, leaving no place for any firm in the market. 

Reducing expenditure and keeping an incoming flow of consumers does not lay the grounds for satisfying said consumers with high quality, lasting products, except for a few rare occurrences depending on the firm’s business model. 

Then, even when product quality isn’t the cause of the issue, when a firm gains a monopoly, they are quite likely to bring down the quality of their products to the bare minimum necessary to still ‘satisfy’ their consumers. It is to note that even though the state usually intervenes and regulates monopolies to mitigate their consequences, they still occur quite a lot as they are natural to capitalism. 

Furthermore, the incentive to innovate is not something that is inherent to Capitalism, and even less strived for; A common argument from Capitalists against socialist ideas is that they don’t really push for innovation, or repress it. This is quite hypocritical, considering today’s fear of automation and how under capitalism it’s seen as a threat to employment and the well-being of society as a whole. In a capitalist mode of production, the working class needs jobs in order to survive and fulfil their basic needs. Therefore, automation is detrimental to society, by augmenting unemployment rates. Automation devalues manual labour. In a free-market capitalist system, unemployed people would lack any support from society, so people would necessarily try to hold back change in the labour process for the sake of living and earning a liveable wage. 

Collectivizing the means of production would naturally make for more innovation, since the incentive to work would not be purely for profit, rather for actual innovation and social progress. 

To think that the only way to progress is to allow people to monetize their ideas through market capitalism is laughable. It's not the case at all. Capitalism only monetizes ideas that seem profitable, and innovates in fields that do not hurt current interests. Even if an idea can be revolutionary and life-saving, it might not gain anything in the capitalist markets if the result is not profit. Any idea that threatens the market share of corporations who are currently profitable is seen as counterproductive and is prevented at any cost. 

This means only a small percentage of ideas are developed. Any revolutionary idea that innovates in a field, while threatening a corporation’s monopoly, is seen as hazardous and will automatically be opposed. This is currently observable with cheaper renewable energy, medical treatment and agriculture. Under capitalism, innovation only serves the interest of the ruling class. 

Then the assertion that capitalism is efficient is fundamentally wrong. First of all, efficiency is defined as an effective operation as measured by a comparison of production with cost. The capitalist definition is where the original claim completely falls apart. Any basic college economics course defines efficiency as maximising the use of our productive resources to satisfy part of unlimited consumer demand with limited resources. The smallest possible expenditure for the resources that are used should be used to maximise production and satisfy the demands of consumers. However, there are a few problems with this. 

First and foremost, the fact that many of those demands are not actual needs, rather wants that the market manufactures for us. Take this example: you walk in a store to buy a phone, and on your way you realise that this phone does not have a headphone jack. You, having wired headphones, you either need to buy a dongle or wireless headphones. This demand for a dongle is not actually real, it was created by a capitalist who, motivated by profit, impeded the quality of his product and offered a more expensive solution; the productive resources that have gone into producing such a dongle were wasted, and it is an evidence that this happens with a ton of other products under a market system. We cannot claim that an economic system is efficient when part of its productive resources that need to be used to fulfil the needs of the population - are used to create problems and propose a fix to them, knowing well and clearly that this problem doesn’t have to exist in the first place. 

Then, let’s talk about what the three principal characteristics of capitalism are. First and foremost, there is a common misconception that capitalism is only defined by markets; that if a system has markets, it's capitalism. That is not the case. It is rather defined by three core components. First, the frequent drive for short term profits over long term stability. Second, the rigid, irreconcilable class antagonisms between the bourgeois and the working class. And third, a devotion to imperialism, perpetual expansion and infinite consumption of resources.

Capitalism relies on the exploitation of workers, both in its home country and abroad. And this working class is entirely at the mercy of its employers. In reality, these workers, which make up quite a large part of the population, are often more excluded from capitalist markets than serfs under feudalism, because the modern worker does not own any of the goods or services they produce. The proceeds of their own labour do not go towards them or the improvement of society, rather to a greedy capitalist that sits on a pile of money, not contributing anything to society beyond tiny donations to charities. While this does not seem like a strong argument, it is important to remember that a lot of societal work is pointless. Workers work more than necessary for the capitalist to make a larger profit, and a ton of jobs are ‘bullshit’, not necessary to society. David Graeber’s book “Bullshit Jobs” illustrates this point very clearly, arguing that over half of societal work is pointless, and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He argues that the association of labour with virtuous suffering is recent in human history, and proposes universal basic income as a potential solution. He then goes on about how the arrival of automation and constant improvement of productivity should have people working no more than 15 hours per week, as infamous economist John Meynard Keynes predicted in 1930. Unsurprisingly, the amount of bullshit jobs and constant drive for profit make it quite frequent for people to work more than 40 hours a week. It is disheartening to see, and a new system needs to be implemented where:

1. There is no market that creates artificial scarcity and demand for non-necessary products (or even for essential products);

2. resources are used efficiently, notably to fulfil the basic needs of the population;

3. and bullshit jobs no longer have people working themselves out until they burn out.

Now, let’s get back to the workers not having access to productive resources. Why does this matter? Because if the workers are excluded from the market system, that means only a tiny minority of people, the bourgeoisie, has access to the market. But the sale of products on the market is only half the equation.  The other half is production. Similar to the sale of products by the bourgeoisie, the production of those products is also controlled by a minority who decide what is produced, how it is produced, and who it is produced for, without input from the workers, worker and consumer cooperatives aside.

These people who do not perform any of the actual labour dictate the terms to those who do and when the demanded products are finished, they make a profit selling them to consumers. They are more often than not only a board of directors and investors who lack knowledge about the field, only being there because of the financial gains they can pull. In this way, the capitalists have complete control of the market system, from production to sale. Okay, but that's just the creation and sale of the actual products right? Doesn't the free market still determine the final price and dictate how and what companies produce? Doesn’t a market do this more efficiently than a central state with a planned economy?

Behold, ladies and gentlemen, the misguided keyboard warriors, defenders of capitalism and their ‘basic economics’! Arguing that “the market is subject to the law of supply and demand. Companies have to produce what the market demands or they won't make a profit.”

 However, this belief in a supposedly economic law is not very accurately reflected in reality, like everything else under capitalism supply and demand is manipulated by the capitalist class, those with money and powert. Let's look at one recent example where some of the biggest Amazon factories destroy millions of good products each year, to artificially decrease supply and increase demand, keeping up their profit margin. That number amounts to more than 130 thousand items per week, from laptops and smartphones to covid masks that are an essential tool to get through this pandemic.

It makes Amazon more money to dump perfectly good items as opposed to selling it at a loss or donating it to charity. Too much product availability drives prices down and it's more profitable to keep demand high by artificially limiting product availability. When there's no demand for a product on the market, companies destroy their stock to artificially inflate demand. They simply destroy excess stock and dump truckloads of non-biodegradable waste in landfills where it will remain forever, further polluting the planet for the sake of short term profits. 

And this doesn’t only apply to consumer goods. Look at the food industry. During the coronavirus pandemic, American dairy farmers dumped 3.7 million gallons of milk per day and potato farmers destroyed 1.5 billion tonnes of their crop. Why? Because it wouldn't be profitable to find ways to give it all away. To their credit. Some potato farmers put out a call to have anyone come and take as many potatoes as they wanted, which is certainly better than nothing. But the fact that we have exactly zero infrastructure in place for the emergency distribution of food products is a damning indictment of the soulless for profit capitalist system. And farmers aren't even close to the worst offenders. It's not uncommon for a single Dunkin donut store to throw away five dozen donuts or more per night. Considering there are more than 9200 locations in the USA alone, the amount of wasted food seems mind bogglingly big.

Then, let's look at grocery stores. They throw away over 43 billion pounds of food every year, a lot of it not even being expired. According to a recent study by TheFood Trust, a full 50% of the discarded food is still perfectly edible when it's thrown away. This is an unconscionable practice when over 23 million Americans are food insecure. 

During the pandemic, we saw armed guards blocking people from retrieving food from dumpsters outside grocery stores. Think about that for a minute. People are desperate enough to dig food out of a dumpster during the worst pandemic in our lifetime. And those in power decide not to help distribute food but to defend our corporate waste with the threat of violence. The US is not the only country at fault here. Other capitalist nations act similarly. We produce enough food to feed every human on Earth with plenty of despair, but the inherent traits of capitalism disincentivize a common sense allocation of resources in favour of maximising profit. While building sustainable infrastructure in exploited countries would cost just over 300 billion dollars, together the huge corporations are making trillions of dollars a year on the backs of their workers.

 These tendencies to cut corners generate tons of waste and neglect long term stability, and they exist in virtually every industry. We've recently seen the consequences of supposed capitalist efficiency in Texas during winter. Millions of Texans were left without power or clean drinking water for days or even weeks on end. This was the direct result of the uncalled for privatisation of our electrical grid and the lack of caring for infrastructure in the name of profits. The result was catastrophic, and future failures will definitely only get worse as the effects of climate change intensify. 

So what are the takeaways here? Capitalism's vision of efficiency is predicated not on ensuring the long term function or sustainability of our systems or the common sense allocation of resources, labour or products, but on minimising costs and maximising profits. Making the smallest investment possible in order to get the biggest return.  

Instead, actual efficiency has to take into account the longevity of systems and the sustainability of practices and products. It's not efficient to overproduce and then dump millions of tons of unopened products into landfills. It's tremendously wasteful. 

It takes labour power, raw materials and carbon emissions to produce those goods, which are then discarded and add to the ever increasing impact on the environment. It's not efficient to let mountains of food rot in dumpsters when millions of Americans don't have enough to eat. Even if you take a capitalist approach, wouldn't it make more sense to ensure that your workers are properly nourished so that they can work at full performance? What about making accommodations for future pandemics or other crises? It will be much more expensive to come up with emergency distribution methods during a crisis than to plan ahead and implement those systems slowly. Same with infrastructure. It's not efficient to build high rises that will collapse into the sea in 10 years, or to neglect weatherizing electrical grids, roads or bridges. Virtually nothing capitalism does is efficient in any real sense. It's wasteful, short, sighted and inhumane. The capitalist notion of efficiency is a sham. It exists only as an excuse for the adherence to the profit motive. So no, capitalism is not the most efficient system. It doesn't deserve to be called efficient at all. People are slowly coming around to that fact. Let's hope it doesn't take many more recessions, statewide power outages or breadlines to put the final nail in the coffin. I mentioned climate change a number of times in this video. It's a prime example of capitalism's short sightedness and how we fail to take into account enormous consequences even a handful of years in the future.

Then, since profit maximisation is the biggest motivation for firms, there are always unethical ways in which they try to reduce the cost of prices of their commodities while still maintaining a high-profit margin. This optimization of profits leads to unethical exploitation and mass destruction of the environment, pollution, and exploitation by under-paying workers and preventing unionising. Outsourcing labour to the global south, at the same time preventing them from developing a strong economy, lobbying the government to pass laws that decrease regulation, dangerous waste that destroys ecosystems, the stealing of natural resources, the list goes on. The unionisation argument is quite a sad reality in today's world. As a Canadian, it is easy to see how without a government regulating the markets, firms could easily and legally prevent workers from unionising. It is evident. Union workers are, on average, paid 33% more than the average worker, which gives them better-living conditions and prevents them from having to rely on a second job to subsist. Corporations strongly oppose that since it hinders their profits and makes the workers more powerful. But then comes lobbying, even with a State to alleviate class antagonisms, as it is the case in the USA, firms bribe the government to pass anti-unionizing laws and do possibly everything mentioned above with no repercussions.

Now, with climate change becoming more and more of an issue every day, it is important to discuss how we should tackle this upcoming environmental crisis. Some people suggest that the world has reached its population limit and therefore cannot contain any more people, and that the unfortunate reality is a situation where we have to be letting people starve to death in order to bring the population down. Maximising human suffering in order to minimise our ecological impact. This is an ideology known as 'eco-fascism'. However this is really not the ideal solution to this climate crisis that could decimate humanity by the end of the century; we really do not need to suffer to a great extent.

Geologists and climate scientists of all fields are warning us that we are heading towards a new geological epoch. Wildlife, greenery, you name it. Everything is slowly but surely starting to die out. Oceans are polluted, coral reefs are dying, species are rapidly going extinct, and the list goes on. All of this because human production has gotten to a point where we are completely above nature. As a result, the world is becoming more grey, and we are creating metabolic rifts in the Earth's natural processes, which are caused by overfishing, pollution, and CO2 emissions. Tons of issues that come with that are climatic disasters, more and more frequent tropical storms, a constant rise in depression and other mental health issues, etc.

As the world goes from green to grey and we are surrounded by more and more consumerism, where we have become one with the commodity, it contributes to humans being more depressed. All of these factors pave our way to this new epoch. One response to that being eco-fascism is completely unacceptable, so this is where ecosocialism comes in.

In short, Capitalism and the private market sector has almost no ways to stop that from coming and getting worse. This is why we see capitalist ideologues looking towards people such as Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos to head towards another planet instead of saving our environment. They have completely given up on Earth and are looking to colonise Mars instead. This idea of abandoning our planet for another one is completely crazy, as it can still be saved. Our only viable option is eco-socialism.

Because our market systems operate on competition to see which capitalist can generate the most profits, 85% of the economy is powered by fossil fuels, which are the least expensive option for corporations to still make a profit. If we have two capitalists competing against each other, say Capitalist A and B both use fossil fuels, and one capitalist decides to start using green energy instead, he's going to lose competition to the other one solely because his profit margin will be slimmer than his antagonist.

We thus cannot save our environment within capitalism, as huge corporations will always try to maximise their profit margin, on that path destroying the environment. The way to change this is to plan production. Rather than have the market system to determine and allocate production, you have a rational system of production and distribution based on planning by actual scientists, engineers, and people who actually understand their field and can allocate factors of production in such a way that we are less of a nuisance to the Earth

Human production has reached the point where we are starting to create rifts in the earth's natural metabolisms. There are many of them that are essential to the survival of any given species, such as recycling co2, photosynthesis, and the cycle of water. Essential elements are being recycled over and over again, but our production is starting to create rifts in those cycles. These cycles regulate the proportion of elements that are on Earth, making human life sustainable. A perfect example of our production altering those cycles is the quantity of CO2 we are sending in our atmosphere.

Now rather than the CO2 regulating itself, humans pump it in the air until a rift in the natural process is caused, therefore warming the earth. To solve this issue, we need to centralise production of the big sectors, notably energy production. Having scientists and geologists, a central csocialist workers state runs these energy companies instead of capitalist oligarchs competing for a higher market share.

We need to put that energy sector on a planned route. That route being the move from fossil fuels, natural gas and coal to renewable energy. Quickly enough so we can save the planet, but slowly enough so people do not love their jobs. For example in Pennsylvania so many people's jobs are related to fracking that banning it would cause an economic collapse. These people with energy-related jobs should be gradually relocated by the state to the renewable energy industry. By nationalising these industries, we save the environment, we allow better conditions and less exploitation of workers, who can then easily unionize. As we move to renewable energy, we can move people between the two energy sectors, until the fossil fuel industry completely phases out.

We can only achieve this through planning, because scientists can understand how the natural processes of Earth work, and if they are given a say over the actual production process, they can design it in a way so that it doesn't create metabolic rifts in the Earth's natural processes. We still have production of goods, services and commodities, but in a way that is harmonious with nature, that doesn't become a nuisance to nature. And we can do that with many different industries, such as housing, food production, goods and services, etc.

By nationalising the housing industry we can create green homes where people can live in community, with an uplifting environment that contributes to the improvement of its residents' mental health, with sidewalks, community gardens, etc. Instead of having individual luxury homes built by capitalists, we could have much better neighbourhoods that would also contribute to drifting away from the nuclear family towards a more community based lifestyle, all while being eco-friendly and sustainable.

Consumerism and the current state of our society has a lot to do with the depression we live in, so eco-socialism could be a great way to fix these issues, all while saving the environment from our demise.  In conclusion, Capitalism is not an economic system that should be appraised, and a new one should definitely be strived for, to sustain future generations of humans and liberate the proletariat.

This is just part of a much broader subject called the treadmill of production theory. In short, the theory of the treadmill of production shows how the constant search for economic growth and profit leads to advanced economies being stuck on a sort of treadmill, where the well-being of that society is not improved by economic growth, yet the impacts of this pursuit of growth and perpetual profit causes massive, unsustainable environmental damages. In looking at the specific driving force that keeps the irrational system of the treadmill so powerfully in place, this theory focuses on how those who control the production process, corporations, are the primary agents that drive the treadmill, while also pointing out how the state and workers generally continue to provide support for the treadmill's continued reproduction. In thinking about ways to begin to unwind the treadmill, there is a clear need to explore why workers, who are also consumers and citizens, continue to support the treadmill of production. It identifies the forces that lock individuals into increasing their income and levels of “defensive consumption” merely to maintain their existing levels of social practices and the well-being generated from them, thus further supporting the reproduction of the treadmill of production. I will make a completely separate video on this topic at a later time.

If I were to own a piece of land between a town and a water reservoir and proceed to charge a fee so the people in the town had access to the water then I wouldn't have created value. All I'm doing is sitting on land and extracting wealth from a basic necessity. This is the basic premise of landlording and why the left sees it as a parasitic relationship. I also want to note that most of this doesn't actually come from Karl Marx or any anti-capitalist writer but from Adam Smith. also known as the father of capitalism. Adam Smith viewed landlords as an inherently inefficient institution even in capitalism. And so did John Stuart Mill, the father of utilitarianism: 

“Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title.”

Value

“But don't landlords provide value by doing repairs and groundskeeping? How is this parasitic?” Well, the value being generated for these services don't come from the landlord, they come from the people doing the repairs or grounds keeping. The landlord is simply a middleman to them and can be cut out entirely. Furthermore, if the landlord does the repairs themselves, as some do. The value that those repairs generate is for themselves, not for you. Those repairs only serve to increase the property that they own. And worst of all, if the tenant must do the repairs themselves, they are giving even further value to the landlord beyond the rent by helping to maintain or increase the value of the landlord's property. They keep all of the value of their labour themselves while extracting increasingly large portions of yours.

Work & Extraction of Value

Most landlords skip the paperwork step by taking a fraction of the rent extractions and hiring a property management company who then deals with everything. Even if the landlord does some work, they're not taking a wage or salary for just the paperwork or the grounds keeping. They're extracting above and beyond the value they provide. We also have a problem in a lot of cities now where landlords are raising rates if there is any increase in wages or an influx of higher wage jobs, so they are able to intercept any community growth in its infancy for their profit.

Affordability & Gentrification

“But landlords make housing affordable!” This is false, in contradiction with the facts of reality. They don't actually make housing affordable, in fact, they do the opposite. In the case of people who cannot afford their own land; Landlords own the land and then extract wealth from those who have no alternative but to rent, their only choice for those people is "who to rent from?" They aren't actually providing anything in this case, instead they pray upon the poor for passive income, not only that but when we talk specifically about absentee landlords, they actually decrease the supply of available land in a given area, this increases the price of the land by simple supply/demand theory. Price ceilings and public housing are a necessity in this situation. This is not to mention that private ownership of housing and distribution driven by profit rather than necessity is the main reason gentrification exists. Landlords drive up housing costs in a similar fashion to grifters, making it more expensive for people who just need housing.

Risk

“The landlords pay for the property and are usually responsible for repairs and maintenance. They might not be contributing much to the continued success, but they did take the initial risk by buying or building the structure.”

How is it a "risk" to buy a house? Everyone needs a place to live. The only real "risk" you take is that no one will want to pay the extraordinary sum asked for living in your property, in which case you'll have to lower the price. And what's the worst that could happen? You have multiple pieces of property, you won't be begging on the street. Unlike the people who rent from you, who are taking the real risk of going bankrupt or into debt to pay for their residence, being saddled with an abusive landlord or becoming homeless.

The risk argument never really made much sense to me considering how secure of an investment housing is, it’s basically guaranteed return.

Opportunity?

 “Landlords are making their way in the world like everyone else. Do you really think all these people who hate landlords wouldn't jump on the opportunity themselves to rent out land to make more money? Some of these people rely on landlording as their only income. Being a landlord is using what you have available and being smart about it.” 

Let’s analyse this argument. First of all, people need to be housed, we shouldn't have to live on the unpredictable & hard conditions of the streets. It was declared a fundamental human right but ignored by most capitalist countries because people are just numbers. Landlords essentially blackmail people into having to pay them what they want for housing, when it should be free. And no, most leftists wouldn't take advantage of people’s basic necessities as we are not comfortable with blackmailing, further than renting an available, empty unit for below market price. Anyways, that statement has no evidence behind it and should not be taken seriously.

Then, landlords never ‘earned’ that money, any problem you have they barely fix because it costs money. We all know of the ‘landlord tricks’ to save any penny they can on a repair. They live off a renter's hard earned money while they do nothing all day. I don't care if they have a family to feed, they should feed them with dignity by getting a real, useful job where they actually work for their money instead of being leeches that sit around collecting people’s income like a mediaeval lord.

“Some landlords are good people, they spend time on repairs and their tenants are fine with them”

Even in the case of actually ‘good’ landlords who do the repairs and work themselves, that work is actually for their own benefit. It's upkeep on their own property, the value of this work is kept almost entirely for himself. It also doesn’t matter if the landlord is  providing housing at all, it is still taking advantage of a basic necessity, and making a massive profit on it, driving up the cost of housing.

A Broken System

“But isn't everything selfish under a capitalistic system?Landlords are just trying their best, using the tools given to them. What else is one to do, growing up in a deeply-entrenched capitalistic society, where the only tools for survival and even an attempt at any sort of autonomy are through completely self-serving means? I think it's difficult to say anybody would do anything different if they benefited in such a way from capitalism. It's not a justification, but I think there's a tendency to get carried away in the Marxist fervour to dehumanise with terms like "parasitic leeches". That'll win nobody over and prevent more people from learning how Marxist systems can still benefit them. Housing is still mostly privatised like most things right now, and I think kudos can be given to people who are trying to work as honestly as possible under a deeply broken system. “

This comment I found in the thread I based this section on is really compelling. We need to act in such selfish ways to get by in a capitalist society, and this includes exploiting others. The argument being made here is the system is broken, and landlords are merely taking advantage of it to get by, and that picturing landlords as leeches wins nobody over. People trying to make the most human decisions and work as honestly as possible in this deeply flawed system should not be dehumanised.

I kind of agree with parts of this statement, the system is broken and a lot of us are simply trying to get by. I understand there are a ton of perfectly fine landlords who rent at below market price. Those people are fine, providing housing in ways similar to the state with public housing. What’s missing here is the bigger picture. These ‘benevolent’ landlords are a tiny minority compared to the landlords who are the most prevalent, huge corporations like Blackstone who own housing and rent it, driving up costs to give a return on investment to their shareholders.

Sadly, that kind of generosity we see with those few individuals is really  disincentivized by market forces, and spending the bare minimum on improving human conditions and quality of life in the pursuit of profit is more rewarding than being a good person. So due to the broken system, benevolent people are the exception, not the rule.

From there, someone else argues: “This was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this video. I know a lot of people have issues with their landlord, but I actually feel bad for the people who are only renting out a unit or two (like if you have a duplex and live in one and rent the other).- but when enough people act like this the small-time "nice" landlord is going to have to sell and it is just going to be gobbled up by the big corporations. I think we need to start making considerations and change our language so that we do not inadvertently cause the problem of unfair/high-rents and slum-lords to get worse by pushing out the average-joe who is just renting out one unit or the condo they bought when they were a bachelor type of thing.”

This is a good point, and I agree with it. Purchasing a duplex to secure additional income to get by, and renting the other unit is perfectly fine, I think as long as the tenant ends up owning the property after a while. 

Renting a vacation property is also perfectly moral, it’s like a hotel except you’re the one who ends up benefiting, along with the person renting it, who is not exploited because of their basic necessity, but rather because they were willing to rent an expensive place for a few days of relaxation. I don’t have a problem with that; just with landlords who exploit basic necessities and use their wealth to buy up multiple properties for the pursuit of further profit, as well as the huge, corrupt corporations.

This is a sufficient explanation, I think. Let’s get housing coops and public housing rolling.

I am currently writing a response to someone who thought had 'debunked' this document, here's how it's going: https://www.notion.so/rivcharles/Response-to-Hampton-on-Landlords-32e025af986a4769b3b3acc2bbe9e486 

Definitions

First, we must define a few concepts. It is vital to our understanding of these ideas to differentiate Socialism, Communism and Marxism. Socialism stands for a wide range of ideologies involving the workers owning the means of production, either decentrally or centrally, with a worker state that provides free healthcare, schooling, housing, and fulfils basic necessities. There is also a new idea of a democratic, centrally planned economy based on computers, with a direct-democratic voting system for public goods allocation. More about that later. Think of Socialism as an extension of democracy, where workers get a say in the economy and the system itself.  It is usually a transitional period to high-stage communism, involving a dictatorship of the proletariat and the collectivisation of farms and the means of production. Obviously there are multiple interpretations of Socialism. Marx never distinguished socialism from communism, rather using lower and higher stage communism to describe the development of a communist society. Lenin then expanded on Marx’s ideas and described Socialism as the transitory stage to achieve communism, where workers have seized state power through a revolution, and have established a dictatorship of the proletariat - a worker democracy with a planned economy where the proletariat is the ruling class, instead of the bourgeoisie.  

Communism refers to late-stage socialism, or its higher stage,  when the workers' state withers away and is no longer necessary; when workers observe the development of their society without ‘fear of a tyrannical, bureaucrat state’. Money as we know it is abolished in favour of labour-time accounting using our current NFC technology, or a gift economy. Classes are abolished, including bureaucrats that could have arisen in lower-stage communism. Communism is the end goal, a society organised horizontally, made of workers councils without a State, but governed by the people. It is not something that is achievable right away, and no communist thinks that unless they’re an idealist and reject scientific socialism. It would take many, many years before arising, and even more if people feel satisfied with an only ‘socialist’ status quo. Socialism is a stage of development of society, just like feudalism and capitalism.

Then, Marxism is a tool that enables us to analyse and understand the world around us as well as the development of societies, through a materialist lense. We use historical and dialectical materialism to explain the rise, development and/or fall of certain economic systems, as well as the contradictions within them that cause these developments. Marx did not really expand that much on dialectics, but his lifetime comrade Fridriech Engels did work on creating the philosophical aspect of Marxism with Anti-Duringh. It is also a critique of political economy, and the theory of scientific socialism, opposed to the idealist utopians that preceded Marx. By extension, Leninism is Marxism applied to the era of imperialism, and theories on revolution, the party, and the national question. Finally, Maoism is an extension of Marxism-Leninism applied to our epoch. I do not believe Maoism to be the ‘final evolution’ of Marxism, since they all go hand in hand. Rather one extension of all these theories.

Basic Premises

Let’s now go over the basic premises of Socialism in order to understand this ideology. We first establish a philosophical foundation based around important values: egalitarianism and justice for the oppressed people of the world. We believe that all members of a society are fundamentally equal to each other, regardless of race, gender or class. Everybody has fundamental and unalienable rights, both material and ‘spiritual’. Socialists believe everyone is entitled to freedom of speech - not in the american, absolute freedom that reaches too far, hate speech laws still have to apply, the right to vote and to be elected - not always  in a representative democracy, rather a liquid/direct democracy, even though there are multiple kinds of socialism involving a technocracy, councils like depending on the interpretation - the right to food and water, employment and reward, healthcare, education, religious practice, rest and leisure, as well as housing and security. This does not mean we strive to achieve full equality of outcome, as this concept has multiple meanings, and for everyone to be fully equal, everyone would have to be one, which is simply not the reality. What we want to achieve is a certain equality of opportunity, and equity in front of the law, as well as an end to the exploitation of the working class and oppressed nations. We want to achieve democracy for the majority, instead of only the capitalist class who makes a few basic concessions. It also means abolishing classes, effectively prohibiting capitalists from consolidating power or exploiting workers.

This is by no means a thorough explanation of socialism, just a basic laying out of our goals and values.

Social-Democrats

First, some history. Social democracy has its roots in the 19th-century socialist movement. It advocated for an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism, using the established liberal democracy, opposed to the revolutionary, scientific socialist approach to this transition. In the early post-war era in Western Europe, social democratic parties rejected the Marxist-Leninist model from the Soviet Union, pushing for an alternative path to socialism, or to a compromise between capitalism and socialism. In our days, the first group would be called democratic socialists, and the second, social-democrats. In the 20th century, social democrats embraced a mixed economy with private property, and only a minority of socialised essential utilities and public services. They promoted Keynesian economics, while disregarding the idea of replacing Capitalism with Socialism. 

This ideology has strong connections with the labour movement and trade unions, being supportive of worker rights, seeking to ‘humanise’ capitalism, in some way. It then evolved to ‘The Third Way’, which  aims to merge liberal economics with welfare policies. It was developed in the 1990s and is sometimes associated with social democratic parties; some analysts have characterised the Third Way as part of the neoliberal movement. It also evolved as the nordic model, applied in countries like Norway, Sweden and Finland. With the historical context out of the way, let’s get into it.

First, I believe it is important to further differentiate socialists from social-democrats. As Socialists, we acknowledge that Capitalism is based on a contradiction of class antagonisms, that objectively cannot be reconciled, and that the state arises only when and insofar as this is the case. The proof of that being the existence of these antagonisms in the first place. Social-democrats seem to believe that a welfare state can ‘solve’ this issue, and reconcile the two classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. But a social democracy is a mixed capitalist system with strong social safety nets and social programs. So in a way it’s ‘friendlier capitalism’, it doesn’t do anything to solve class antagonisms, it just alleviates them for a while. In nordic countries with this model, unionisation rates are usually higher, so workers enjoy better benefits, pay and working conditions. Being a social-democrat means not wanting to overthrow capitalism,but achieving a revised Capitalism, through reform.

Sure, social democracies have improved material conditions for the working class when compared to free market capitalism, the NHS is a good example of this. - though the Tories are slowly dismantling it in the name of keeping a balanced budget - There are still significant problems that remain with social democracies. They don't fix fundamental flaws of capitalism. First, the mechanisms in capitalist economies have a tendency to generate gross inequalities of income, wealth and opportunities. Since most of the wealth is generational, you can't really redistribute it with income tax. Inheritance tax exists, but it's not a good, final solution either. Rich people always find ways to get away with fraud. Now social democracies have generally failed at addressing these problems. Only a radical change in the mode of distribution of personal incomes - socialism - offers a real chance of eliminating that income inequality. Most of these flaws such as cyclical instability, alienation and exploitation, are still present in social democracies. Taxes on the rich and progressive taxation don’t attack the source of the issue, only its effects. 

Then, the idea of a mixed economy is problematic. In those that have existed, the socialistic elements have remained ‘subordinated’ to the capitalist elements. Like the commodity and wage forms that have remained core parts of the production process. the working class also remains subordinated to the bourgeoisie, class antagonisms don't magically go away with reform. What social democracy is effectively doing is consolidating Capitalism as a system and limiting its efficiency. These social safety nets had to be financed out of tax revenue extracted from the private sector, which meant that the opportunities for expansion of ‘welfare’ measures and the ‘free’ distribution of basic services have been dependent on the health of that private sector.

Only when the capitalist sector has been growing strongly have social democratic governments been able to deliver on their promises. In that way socdems are extremely limited in what they can achieve: their own attempts at redistributing threaten to destroy the capitalist extraction of wealth which they themselves depend on. Finally, social democracies mostly popped up under threat of a communist revolution when the USSR became a prominent power. Now that it no longer exists, we see them rolling out austerity measures and slowly dismantling social safety nets, for the gains of capitalists.

Social Democracies also rely on imperialism and exploitation of the global south to thrive. Even on the most basic goods, such as a smartphone, the raw materials were sourced in African mines, where the workers might be paid near starvation wages, then sent to China to be assembled in a factory, where the workers might be paid another starvation wage. The surplus value produced by that cheap labour is extracted by the company selling it to the metropolis, the people living in social democracies. This same principle applies to almost every good produced abroad. In short, European social democracy was built on the pillage of the global south. Most of the infrastructure that allows social democracy to function was built on money from active pillaging, and is maintained by exploitation of the global south. 

For example, Norway found massive reserves of oil in the 1980s. Beyond the fact that oil extraction and sale alone represent the exploitation of the global south, the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund which oil revenues fund owns 1.4% of the world’s entire stock market. Many of the firms in this massive portfolio have supply lines which run through developing countries. It includes investment in firms such as Apple, Coca Cola and Hershey. Apple contracts labour through FoxConn, who has treated workers so badly that they were committing suicide at work because of the atrocious conditions. It also relies on coltan, which is a mineral heavily linked to warlordism, child abuse and slavery in the Eastern Congo Basin. The profits created by the sale of conflict minerals such as coltan, cobalt, gold and wolframite are also likely to be funnelled into war supplies. Coca Cola has bought water sources, and then restricted local access to them in developing countries, like the Indian states of Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, which cripples the ability of local farmers to produce. Many other companies in this portfolio heavily rely on exploitation of the global south and give atrocious working conditions.

All of these firms directly bring about immense human suffering across the globe. This directly benefits each and every resident of Norway. The fund is worth $195,000  per person, directly off the backs of workers in the global south. When people argue that social democracy is not inherently imperialistic, their claim can easily be countered by the fact that it is Capitalism, and it is inevitable that its extension will be imperialism.

Finally, western social democrats have no coherent idea of what planned and non-commodity forms of production - for use - are ultimately about, and how their problems can be addressed. Rejecting the planning of an economy and the dismantling of capitalism beyond basic social reform is a completely moronic attitude when you consider the previous points. We socialists don’t just believe in ‘taxing the rich’, we believe in replacing the system that allows them to exist at the expense of everyone else, not mitigating its effects and ignoring the suffering it causes. Reform can be a good thing on the path to socialism, but it can also quickly be withdrawn, and we have to be careful about it.

Why Socialism?

Then, you may ask the question: why should I be a socialist? Well, socialism is to us an ideology based on the belief that humanity must act in a united and organised manner to face the problems of our generation and beyond. We are tired of how greed and wealth run our world, and how a few billionaire business oligarchs have more power to influence the world than all the rest of us combined. We currently are facing a very bad housing crisis, where our generation will probably never be able to afford homes even with relatively high salaries, and alienation from our labour and even reality itself is at an all time high. It’s time for change, for a system that benefits everybody. 

As Socialism101.com puts it: “Workers are not paid their worth. The value that a worker produces is worth significantly more than the wage he’s given. His boss exploits him and his labour for profit - to make money. In the workplace, the worker lives under the dictatorship of his boss. He does not have freedom of speech (he can be fired for saying the "wrong" thing) and there is no democracy; the CEO and the Board of Directors decide everything - the workers are generally not allowed to make decisions for themselves or for the entire company.” 

Let’s look at an essay written by Albert Einstein, with the same name as this chapter. According to him, the profit motive of a capitalist society, paired with competition among capitalists, leads to unnecessary cycles of booms and depressions, and ultimately encourages selfishness instead of mutual aid, cooperation. Then, the superstructure, the educational system of a capitalist society is severely undermined because people educate themselves only to advance their careers and pursue profits over happiness or helping others. This results in the erosion of creativity. Unregulated competition in a capitalist society leads to a huge waste of labor and causes economic anarchy, which Einstein denounces as the real source of capitalism's evil:

“The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.”

Einstein correctly predicted that in capitalist societies, individuals with wealth would consolidate power and influence political decisions, making a truly evil system.

“I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.”

Einstein explains that a planned economy that produces for use would guarantee everyone a better life:

“In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilised in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.”

He also followed through with this idea, explaining how the mere planning of an economy is not socialism, since it could, at his time, lead to a bureaucratic elite rather than its intended effect. This is why the dictatorship of the proletariat should be strong, and organised through constantly self-criticising councils of workers, without restrictions.

Property

Let us now talk about property. A lot of people seem to hold the belief that under socialism, there would be no personal property, hence ‘the State could barge into your home and steal your house’, or another insanity like that. It’s really not the case; we make a clear distinction between private and personal property. 

Private property in this case refers to anything used to generate Capital from the exploitation of a worker’s labour or necessities. It can be a farm, a corporation, a factory or a supermarket. All of these would be considered private property, and therefore under socialism they would be turned into public property, owned and controlled by the workers either directly through a coop, or through a workers state. This does not include small businesses such as mom and pop shops, where no exploitation really happens. As a Marxist-Leninist, I still believe there is a place for a small private sector made of small businesses and worker cooperatives to offer broader choice to local communities. I believe small and medium companies should be able to run within a socialist framework, on a small scale. Socialism greatly benefits small business owners and gives them better opportunities, it does not prevent them from existing. 

On the other hand, personal property refers to everything else that someone may own. Their house, their car, their toothbrush, you name it. These things would still be the personal property of their owners no matter the stage of socialism or communism. That is, except for the empty rent or investing houses belonging to the landlords which hog the market, preventing people from accessing affordable housing. A good example of the housing system is the USSR, where a lot of people could own a house and a vacation home at the same time, making for a very comfortable life. This is not an argument or an apology of the USSR, I am very well aware that non-russians typically did not enjoy as much benefits. It is solely an example to illustrate my point. 

Capitalists would be expropriated and re-included through re-education and would receive compensation. The program of the Communist Party of Canada explains this much better than I can:

“The functioning of the economy will require that small and medium non-monopoly businesses continue to operate for some time as part of the overall economic plan, under a variety of forms of property and of production, under conditions established by the socialist government. In addition to state enterprises and private enterprise, there will be producers’ and consumers’ cooperatives and, where conditions warrant, joint state-and-private enterprises.

The individual ownership by working people of personal possessions, homes and cottages, pensions, savings and insurance policies will be guaranteed. The Canadian people themselves will decide, in the light of circumstances, on any compensation for the expropriated property of big capitalists.”

Pay/Economics

Regarding pay, there are many ways to look at it. We can have a system of command economy where everyone is paid a flat wage, with a worker’s state regulating the production of affordable goods and services, with a labour gradation system, like the one Paul Cockshott proposed in his work Towards a New Socialism. But it is not limited to this: we can still use money under lower-stage communism, people would just be rewarded for their merit; for the labour they put in, not for their sheer luck. In the higher stage, we can have a labour-stamp system that works without exchange, just like movie tickets. A worker works for an hour, gets a certificate from his community awarding him one labour-hour that he can spend on a good or service that has taken an hour of socially necessary labour-time to create. Then, we can have some kind of egoist mutualism, where there is no exchange of currency, rather individuals in a community provide their services in return for the goods and services of the other individuals in the community, with their motivation being either helping sustain the community or the reward they get from doing so. Some kind of gift economy like we saw in ancient societies. I am currently learning linear algebra to understand cybernetic socialism, and this is definitely something worth looking into. A system that is not exactly a command economy, but that is not based on markets, rather on computers. Paul Cockshott has great resources on that on his 

youtube channel. 

My Socialism

My personal take on how to run a socialist society would be a computer-based planned economy, paired with a direct democratic, council and computer based system where workers have a higher say in economic decisions. I do believe there is a place for technocracy within socialism, especially with educated individuals with experience taking the most important decisions concerning fields in which the regular citizen does not have vast knowledge. I will expand on that during a later time, when I am well-read on that. 

Regarding distribution of luxury goods, companies currently producing commodities would probably be worker cooperatives like in Cuba. I also call myself an eco-socialist; because of the incoming climate crisis we face, I believe we need to put the energy sector on a planned route. That route being the move from fossil fuels, natural gas and coal to renewable energy. Quickly enough so we can save the planet, but slowly enough so people do not love their jobs. For example in Pennsylvania so many people's jobs are related to fracking that banning it would cause an economic collapse. These people with energy-related jobs should be gradually relocated by the state to the renewable energy industry. By nationalizing these industries, we save the environment, we allow better conditions and less exploitation of workers, who can then easily unionize. As we move to renewable energy, we can move people between the two energy sectors, until the fossil fuel industry completely phases out.

We can only achieve this through planning, because scientists can understand how the natural processes of Earth work, and if they are given a say over the actual production process, they can design it in a way so that it doesn't create metabolic rifts in the Earth's natural processes. We still have production of goods, services and commodities, but in a way that is harmonious with nature, that doesn't become a nuisance to nature. And we can do that with many different industries, such as housing, food production, goods and services, etc.

By nationalizing the housing industry we can create green homes where people can live in community, with an uplifting environment that contributes to the improvement of its residents' mental health, with sidewalks, community gardens, etc. Instead of having individual luxury homes built by capitalists, we could have much better neighbourhoods that would also contribute to drifting away from the nuclear family towards a more community based lifestyle, all while being eco-friendly and sustainable.

I thus believe that socialism is a great solution to solve the environmental problems we face. I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I advocate for a dictatorship of the proletariat following an international, uninterrupted revolution. 

Human nature

Then, some individuals might argue against socialism/communism by saying human nature ‘debunks’ it, how greed and need for power is inherent to human nature in any given social and economic system, as if it’s a static, unchanging thing. A very quick glance at anthropology or even the tiniest bit of research about history shows that it is not an unchanging thing. “Human nature” reflects the historical, cultural and material conditions present in that given society. We have seen many different ways of social organisation, with each having a seemingly different pattern of human behaviour. We have even seen indigenous societies live under systems similar to socialism or communism on a smaller scale, so using that talking point would ignore all those previous societies.

The human nature argument can be narrowed down to a simple premise: the ideology which rules society is shaped by the basic economic relations within it. We see it as a very natural thing to work for a monetary incentive, simply because it is what our current economic system pushes us to do. We seem greedy, simply because we need to accumulate money in order to pay for shelter, food, gas, and our future savings. Paying for our basic necessities, which are all commodified under Capitalism, has us behave in a way that can be perceived as greedy. In an egalitarian system where everyone’s basic needs are fulfilled, and there is no longer need to accumulate money for an ‘emergency fund’ in case something happens, people don’t perceive each other as competitors and stop hoarding wealth; they can enjoy the fruits of their labour while not seeming greedy. It is simply a case of our socio-economic system pushing us to do things we otherwise wouldn't, in the simple quest to get by since in order to succeed in Capitalism, you have to be ‘perceived as greedy’.

Egalitarian societies have existed for tens of thousands of years before our modern civilisations. We have always been fundamentally equal to each other and shared our resources to guarantee our survival. Yes, it can be argued that our individual selfishness is part of our nature, but being selfish does not negate the ideas of Socialism. Being equal to each other and having strong communities to sustain ‘failing’ or disadvantaged individuals does not come in contradiction with a harmony of egoism.

The argument that someone can come to power and abuse it is relatively humorous, considering that modern day states are stable because of armed organisations that prevent this from happening, in the form of the army and of the police. Under communism, public militias and councils would ensure peace and the sustaining of society.

Fromm’s essay on the conception of human nature Marx had is pretty useful to understand the former: 

“Marx did not believe, as do many contemporary sociologists and psychologists, that there is no such thing as the nature of man; that man at birth is like a blank sheet of paper, on which the culture writes its text. Quite in contrast to this sociological relativism, Marx started out with the idea that man qua man is a recognizable and ascertainable entity; that man can be defined as man not only biologically, anatomically and physiologically, but also psychologically.

Of course, Marx was never tempted to assume that "human nature" was identical with that particular expression of human nature prevalent in his own society. In arguing against Bentham, Marx said: "To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch."

The human nature argument is thus a mediocre attempt at justifying a broken system, by portraying humans as selfish, egotistical beings.

Incentives

Then comes the discussion about the incentive to work and how the labour process would look like under socialism. It is pretty straightforward: your incentive to work is enabled by your needs and personal desires, say to help your community, and by the mode of production. We can’t argue that everyone would become a taxi driver or perform easier jobs, since everyone has different motives and would much rather perform more satisfying and fulfilling work rather than feeling alienated, especially when the resources to gain the skills necessary to perform that work are right under their nose, free to use. Under capitalism, the main incentive to work is to sustain yourself, to fulfil your basic needs. Then comes personal fulfilment and mutual aid. Well that depends on the field, I wouldn’t say a businessman has any community aid motive, since profit is the only goal they aim for. Under socialism, the motivation to work would be personal fulfilment, helping your community, sustaining society, without having to worry about losing your job because market forces forced your company to outsource their labour to a developing country or labour markets crashing in your field. People would still be rewarded more for becoming doctors, engineers and other very high skill jobs, just not in the same way as capitalism.

In many, many epochs, the incentive to work was not greed or selfishness. It's just idiotic to think that without capitalism, we would all starve to death. Let’s take this example: you and your friends want to build a barn, someone makes the plan, someone cuts the wood. And then someone builds it. You all participate in building the barn, and at the end, you all get to use it. So because of that, there's no need for currency to be exchanged in that process in true communal fashion. There's no CEO that makes you all build the barn and then pays you wage and extracts surplus value from your labour and then charges you to use the barn. This is obviously a simplification, but it gets my point across.

Law Enforcement

Now, let’s look at the Marxist take on law enforcement, using part of Lenin’s State and Revolution. The State arises from society, places itself above it, and alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons and other means of coercion at their command. Law enforcement. We are justified in speaking of those ‘special bodies of armed men’, as the public power, the police - which is an attribute of every state - does not directly coincide with the armed population and its self-acting armed organisation. Engels tries to draw the attention of class-conscious workers to what most people disregard as least worthy of attention, as the most habitual thing, honoured by deep-rooted  prejudices. An army and the police are the prime instruments of state power, but how can it be otherwise?

To those who had not witnessed a revolution, the concept of a self-acting armed organisation was completely foreign to them. Society is split into antagonistic and irreconcilable antagonistic classes, whose self-acting arming would lead to a mutual armed struggle. A state arises, a special power is created - the police- and in every revolution that, by destroying the state apparatus, show the class struggle - shows that the ruling class - the bourgeoisie- strives to restore that special body of armed men that serves it, and in contrast how the exploited class strives to create their own body of armed men, capable of serving them. Engels pointed out that sometimes this public power is weak, but, generally speaking, it grows stronger. 

In short, the police serve only the ruling class of the current system. Historically, this ruling class has always been the bourgeoisie, which used state power to enforce the capitalist status quo, suppressing the proletariat. Hence, that exploited class, oppressed by the state power used by the bourgeoisie, should seize that state power to serve their own interest. In simple terms, instead of state power being used to fight drugs and property crime in low-income neighbourhoods under capitalism, state power should be used to arrest the bourgeois people who get away with more evil crimes simply because of their financial status. Once a sociali st society is established, there is no reason to think that crime would be that much of an issue, since it usually arises from poor material conditions. Law enforcement would probably look like local services to help struggling people and would put forward rehabilitation instead of punishment. 

Now, with the actual, current events going on in the world, and police brutality being very prevalent all across major cities, it is important to address and go over police defunding and abolition, what it means and how to achieve it. It would be hard to eliminate the protectors of property under a capitalist system, but defunding would be a viable, temporary solution to alleviate some anxiety.

First of all, let’s go over what police abolition and defunding are actually about, since a lot of people have the misconception that it’s an instantaneous process that will cause every citizen to commit mass murder while shoplifting iphones at the local mall, which would cause anarchy, the capital city exploding and the eradication of human race. It’s simply not the case. Defunding the police is rather a gradual process, involving a reallocation of resources, responsibility and funding, away from the police and towards a community-based model of safety that revolves around prevention, treatment and support. It should be a crisis response unit that is better equipped to deal with crime. Again, I personally think that rehabilitation is better than punishment, and preventing crime rather than punishing people for it, would be a much better system.

Now, a lot of people think that a system without a police force to enforce the status quo would not work, but let’s disprove that by taking a look at empirical evidence. In Eugene, Oregon, a nonprofit mobile crisis intervention program called CAHOOTS has handled mental health calls since 1989 and is often cited as a model for an alternative to police handling mental health calls. In 2019, CAHOOTS responded to 20% of Eugene's 911 calls on a budget of $2 million. In 2012, Camden, New Jersey—then referred to as "the most dangerous city in the United States"— defunded its police department. The city had numerous problems with police corruption and many instances in which police would plant drugs on citizens. As a result, the city disbanded the police department and created a new one under county control, which allowed for funds to be reallocated to community-building initiatives. The new department had more officers, but their roles were reframed to be community-oriented and focused on de-escalating violence. A seven-year study showed that violent crime dropped 42% and the crime rate dropped from 79 per 1,000 to 44 per 1,000. Camden dropped down the list of most dangerous cities in the U.S. to tenth.

To expand on that, let’s take a look at why crimes happen, because they sure aren’t random, and would happen way less in other living conditions. Poverty is one of the leading factors relating to crime, whether it’s assault, burglary or theft. Economically disadvantaged people will tend to resort to theft and shoplifting to subsist and fulfil their basic needs.

A study by the International Journal of Social Economics proved that there is a positive co-integrating relationship between poverty and property crime. Regarding violent crime: a low socioeconomic status is thought to have a correlation with higher levels of stress, and therefore the mental and psychological ill-effects of stress.These higher stress levels would probably be correlated positively with the propensity to commit a crime. 

Another study by the World Bank said, “Crime rates and inequality are positively correlated within countries and, particularly, between countries, and this correlation reflects causation inequality to crime rates, even after controlling for other crime determinants.”

In short, property and violent crime rates tend to be higher in low-income areas. It’s not really hard to grasp, and it’s pretty logical that being disadvantaged by the system makes you more desperate and sometimes resort to crime. This would lead me to address systemic racism, however it’s a topic for another, more concise video.

Now, let’s come back to the topic of defunding the police. Shifting funding away from it and towards services that actually help meet the basic needs of the people committing property crimes in the first place, we could get to a place where we don’t have to shoplift to survive, just to get beat up by a cop and sentenced to six months in jail.

And this whole thing goes beyond police brutality, it’s about how the prison system, the drug war, immigration laws, as well as other policies and culture that forms the criminal justice system has caused great damage to humanity. Families have been torn apart, people have been unfairly sentenced, and millions of lives have been unjustly destroyed. The police do not prevent crime, they cause it through the violent disruption of low income communities. It should not even be surprising, as early policing had little to do with actual crime control, but was performed by volunteer citizens who served as slave patrols. In other countries, it was about defending property, not the people.

Now, let’s take a look at what alternatives could be created as an alternative to the current policing system. Police are more likely to use lethal force when attending to an emergency call when a person is experiencing psychiatric distress. When an individual calls 911 when experiencing mental distress, what they need is expertise in de-escalation, social and health supports & services. Instead, they are met with multiple armed and uniformed police officers. By defunding the police, resources can be reallocated to create new community emergency services to support the mental health needs of our vulnerable community members. Teams trained in de-escalation and who root their work in community-informed practices could provide crisis support and care. Traffic services are another aspect of this subject, as armed, uniformed officers on the road are unnecessary to the protection of the population. High speed chases often kill innocent civilians, and there are way better alternatives to that, like civilian services.

Society often assumes that defunding the police would make it more vulnerable to violent crime. But we have to remember that police do not prevent violence. In most incidents of violent crime, police are responding to a crime that has already taken place. When this happens, what we need from the police is a service that will investigate the crime, and perhaps prevent such crimes from occurring in future.

Policing is badly equipped to suit these needs. When victims are not the right kinds of victims, police have utterly failed, and at times refused to take the threat seriously. Why would we rely on an institution that has consistently proven that it is rife with systemic racism and other forms of discrimination that result in some communities being deemed unworthy of support? Instead of relying on police, we should rely on investigators from other sectors to carry out investigations. Social workers, sociologists, forensic scientists, doctors, and other well-trained individuals to fulfill our needs when violent crimes take place.

Police intervention into an ongoing violent crime is rare. But, in the event that intervention is necessary while a violent crime is ongoing, a service that provides expert specialized rapid response does not need to be connected to an institution of policing that fails in every other respect. Such a specialized service does not require the billions of dollars we waste in ineffective policing from year to year. An emergency response unit, separate from civilian services, should handle these situations.

To wrap this up, let’s talk about how to actually implement this, as it may look good on paper but wouldn’t be feasible without a clear action plan.

Spending on the police by state and local governments jumped from about $10 billion in 1960 to $137 billion in 2018, adjusted for inflation. However, the ever-increasing amount of money spent on policing has borne little relationship to crime rates. The number of crimes rose from 1,887 per 100,000 Americans in 1960 to 5,950 in 1980. Then rates started to decline, falling to 2,580 per 100,000 by 2018. And yet spending has steadily increased throughout that span.

In short, the best plan of action is to greatly cut in police funding, direct spending to help and community services, then implement a civilian service that will do a better job at protecting the population. All in all, gradually defunding, and abolishing the police would greatly benefit society.  Ultimately, this cannot be fully achieved without the overthrow of capitalism; the fulfilment of basic necessities.

Social Reform or Revolution

Socialism seems great on paper, but how do we achieve it? How do we do socialism? How about the previous socialist experiments? Well let’s settle down and observe the ways to achieve this society by analysing Lenin and Luxemburg’s teachings.

First and foremost, the way of achieving Socialism would vary a lot depending on whom you may ask, and which country is in question. The conditions in which it is implemented would make it very different from somewhere else. In the global south, workers are already fed up with their exploitation, and leftist leaders are elected all across that region, like Pedro Castillo, Xiomara Castro and other latin american leaders. Unless there is CIA intervention, it is inevitable that socialism will eventually be reached there. This is just the basic historical materialist assumption. 

Let us now focus on the west. Canada, the US, Europe. How do we reach socialism? Well it’s surely not as simple as a worker’s revolution or reform. We must first form strong communities, practise mutual aid and build strong worker unions. Improving the material conditions of our communities is a key step in reaching our goals. 

The first stage is organising our communities and forming strong unions to resist the capitalist machine. Then, electing representatives that are closer to our point of view than typical liberal or bourgeois-democrat politicians to help pass law projects and reforms that give more power to the workers gives us an advantage. Politicians who can afford to spend their time fighting conservative reforms in the house of commons, and propose projects that benefit every working class person. However, we should not only rely on reform, since they can easily get reversed, and bourgeois electoralism alone won’t get us anywhere. It is absolutely inevitable that the neoliberal system itself will collapse because of its inner contradictions. It is therefore our job to ensure that when it does collapse, it is not in fascism, rather in a socialist, worker’s revolution. Make sure to read Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution as well as Vladimir Lenin’s State and Revolution. 

In the critique of the Gotha Program, Marx critiques the social-democratic party of Germany; he’s defending a revolutionary project against a reformist one. Doing so combats reformism whilst clarifying marxist theory. He talks about the dictatorship of the proletariat, the concept of a transition state, proletarian internationalism, and scientific distribution. I took and improved this condensed resume that was written by Parker Trager a while back. Let’s start with chapter 1.

"Labour is the source of wealth and all culture, and since useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labour belong undiminished with equal rights to all members of society.”

Marx asks what are the proceeds of labour, the product of labour or its value and what is meant by fair distribution. The capitalists argue it is already fair. However, legal frameworks for relations and distribution rise out of economic relations to begin with. To say the proceeds of labour belong undiminished includes those who do not or can not work, but that means those proceeds cannot be undiminished, for it would involve taking labour proceeds and giving it to those who did not engage in labour.

1. The idea of undiminished proceeds of labour does not and can not make sense because in the sense of workers owning the means of production, certain essential deductions must be taken out of the proceeds of labour to both cover the cost of doing business and creating a robust social safety net for society;

2. There are multiple phases of communism. In the lower phase  the individual receives back from society after deduction exactly what they gave to it;

3. The distribution of goods and resources ca=not be separated from the underlying mode of production.

In the first example, the claim that in a communist society every worker must receive the undiminished proceeds of labour is absurd. Because in a society where the instruments of labour are common property, the product of labour is a social product. As such, deductions from the proceeds of labour must be taken to cover the cost of doing business, which includes the necessary expenditure for the maintenance of the means of production, the expansion of production, and reserved funds to cover accidents and disasters. More importantly, deductions from the proceeds of labour need to be made to cover the costs of administration of society, not belonging to production and the common satisfaction of social needs, which grow in proportion to the development of socialism, and funds to cover those unable to work who need to be taken from. 

The ‘undiminished’ proceeds of labour have already unnoticeably become converted into the ‘diminished’ proceeds, although what the producer is deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society.

In other words, while some chunk of what the labourer creates is taken, the worker is paid back in being a member of society whose needs are taken care of. In capitalism they are not paid by worth and their money is taken by imperialists, landlords, governments, and other institutions. In communism, the money is used for the maintenance of society and the upholdment of the masses.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.

Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labour. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labour cost. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labour in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form.

Marx says the idea that we are equal in this lower phase of communism is still stigmatized by bourgeois limitation. The amount one gives to consume remains predicated with the proceeds of labour they supplied. In the lower phases of communism, inequality will still exist. But instead of that inequality being premised on class conflict and private property, it will be on labour and how much labour one gives to society. But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labour in the same time, or can labour for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. 

This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labour. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal. But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society, as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Although socialism would protect social welfare it would still be slightly limited to its slogan in the lower phases. To acknowledge that socialism must arise out of capitalism, and we can't abolish inequality overnight, we have a much more logical and scientific understanding of past socialist experiments and their context. 

To fail to recognize this is to fall naive to utopianism which has historically failed us in periods like the french revolution and catalonia. This closes the possibility of moving forward at all. The distribution of goods and resources is a function of the mode of production.  Any distribution, whatever the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labour power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results in a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one.

Vulgar socialism has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relationship has long been made clear, why retrogress again?

We have radical liberals and “socialists” whose only political project is to alter the distribution of goods and resources, whilst rejecting the claim that people need to hold the means of production. That's where these issues originate. People that are like this spend all of their time focusing on bourgeois democracy, which never gets them anywhere and recycles history over and over again and simply for so-called progressives, who then betray their very views. 

They are utopians who think that they can push a neoliberal further to the left. It is clear that they don't understand a thing about capitalism's modern functions and haven't read any theory. They are utopians who don't have a formulated understanding of capitalism and the psych. These people reject all forms of violence. Marx shows us social democracies can never be efficient and that distribution will always be tied to the dominant mode of production. In order to move to socialism, a confrontation with the ruling class and their property is a must. The working class strives for its emancipation first of all within the framework of the present-day national states, conscious that the necessary result of its efforts, which are common to the workers of all civilized countries, will be the international brotherhood of peoples. This sentiment in nationalism opposes the manifesto and all forms of socialism; it conflates the necessity of fighting first at home with the sufficiency of fighting at home. 

It is altogether self-evident that, to be able to fight at all, the working class must organize itself at home as a class and that its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle -- insofar as its class struggle is national, not in substance, but, as the Communist Manifesto says, "in form". But the "framework of the present-day national state", for instance, the German Empire, is itself, in its turn, economically "within the framework" of the world market, politically "within the framework" of the system of states. Every businessman knows that German trade is at the same time foreign trade, and the greatness of Herr Bismarck consists, to be sure, precisely in his pursuing a kind of international policy.

This view is too narrow; it reduces proletarian internationalism to a near consciousness that the result of its efforts will be the international brotherhood of all people. It does nothing to lay out the international functions of the german working class, instead adding awareness and suggesting a future brotherhood. This stands below the bourgeois brotherhood as the bourgeois also assert that their efforts will be the international brotherhood of all people. This internationalism is imperialist and cosmopolitan culturally and embraces free trade. This international does something whilst the socdems is just a mere idea. He argues that the international workingmen's association was at least an attempt to create a central organ for proletarian internationalism despite its flaws. The german working party had sworn off international trade. 

"The German Workers' party, in order to pave the way to the solution of the social question, demands the establishment of producers' co-operative societies with state aid under the democratic control of the toiling people. The producers' co-operative societies are to be called into being for industry and agriculture on such a scale that the socialist organization of the total labour will arise from them."

The program fails to understand revolutionary needs. Instead of arising from the revolutionary process of transformation of society, the "socialist organization of the total labour" "arises" from the "state aid" that the state gives to the producers' co-operative societies and which the state, not the workers, "calls into being". It is worthy of Lassalle's imagination that with state loans one can build a new society just as well as a new railway!

This reveals socdems failed views of the state. They view it out as a form of bourgeois control but rather an entity that can be manipulated by the proletariat. The Gotha programme ends up calling for government funded cooperatives and then says these cooperatives can in some way abolish capitalism and capitalist social relations. This is not the organized proletariat but rather the impartial state. The state has bourgeois control then and now. The demand claims that the state aid will be placed under the control of toiling people but this language is superfluous because at the time the toilers were peasants not proletarians. This bad language angers marx. If the toiling people make demands to the state there is an inherent concession that the state rules not the toiling people hence there is no way to create power for the masses since they need to rely on the state to organize and move on. Marx doesn't reject cooperatives and says.That the workers desire to establish the conditions for co-operative production on a social scale, and first of all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to revolutionize the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state aid.

 So under the socdem program the control is sanctioned by and achieved by a state that is not a friend of the people. But as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not proteges either of the governments or of the bourgeois.

There might be room for developing cooperatives but it cannot be funded by the4 state and has to be created by the workers as a movement, vash is always talking about pushing biden left and rejecting revolution but of course this would never work.

Marx rejects the lasallian free basis of the state. It is by no means the aim of the workers, who have got rid of the narrow mentality of humble subjects, to set the state free. In the German Empire, the "state" is almost as "free" as in Russia. Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it; and today, too, the forms of state are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the "freedom of the state".

The idea of setting the state free doesn't make sense from a socialist demand.there is a certain sense in which the state was set free by bourgeois revolutions such as the collapse of feudalism and such. Marx argues the socks misunderstand the function and role of the state because it treats the state rather as an independent entity that possesses its own intellectual, ethical, and libertarian bases.

The state for Marx is not an independent rule but is an identity expressing class rule and conflict. It cannot express free from class rule but rather a representation of it. 

More than one issue in capitalism to focus on and rather than putting your action on one we need to dismantle the system. The different states of the different civilized countries, in spite of their diversity of form, all have this in common: that they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed.

The state has to exist to represent the class conflict. The present bourgeois state can be contrasted with a future state when capitalism fades away. Marx explains there must be a communsit capitalist phase the dotp. Marx says the program does not note the stage of development or state features that would develop under communism but rather reiterates bourgeois rights. Because the party wants to work with the state the demands are mainly pointless because at the time Germany was an empire without a liberal democracy. This may have made sense in a different framework to expand a democratic republic but not for the left.

Marx critiques their view on education. The socdems support universal education equal on all levels and compulsory by the state. He questions whether equal education can exist as long as a state and class and property exist. The project attempts to seek equality but does not analyze the thighs that compound equality and inequality.  And compulsory education has been achieved in Germany and such and isn't really a socialist demand. Universal education isn't a socialist demand as it makes no sense that the state got to educate the people as the state represents class rule and it will and can inherently form our ideology. This is why I view freud lacan althusser and adorno as so important. Education is the job of the people not the state. State regulations on education are ok but not state education. 

Workplace democracy still fails to address all of the main issues and hence cannot be a valid solution to dismantle oppression, hence combatting syndicalism. Marx says there should be no free state and the state should help the workers get their hands on the means of production and with worker control the state will seize. Between capitalism and communism there relies a transition of revolutionary movements and political in which we have a dictatorship of the proletariats 

Our biggest conclusions from this are as follows:

1. A revolutionary program needs to be very specific in its material demands conditions and ideals and political power

2. With the sociological base and superstructure you can't keep the production capitalist while improving consumption to help the workers

3. Because without the power in worker hands changes in distribution and consumption are subject to roll back 

4. We need to be very careful think purposefully and tactically and critically 

Then, what are the applications of this work?

Well, first on Eco-Marxism: Marx talks about how labour is not the only source of all wealth but also nature. This puts our relation to nature as communists and proletarians with nature. This is the core strength of dialectics; it leaves nothing out.our species and the environment have a dialectical relation. Capitalism sees the world as static innate and unconnected material that is not important until commodified. Liberals interpret the natural world as something outside of our world, and protestants see us as placed on earth to be a dominion over nature. 

Marx rejects this separateness: we need to place the human back in the proper context and understand our productive capacities that are dependent on the ways of life. The dialectical mind sees the world as an interconnected species. Marx lays down the principles of eco marxism and man's relation to nature. There can not be socialism without respect for the nature because of lack if dialectics. and we can't fix the environment unless we change philosophy and economics.marx probably wasn't aware but he did know that this hbad a large interpretation of meaning.chapter 2 of socialism utopian related and non contradiction because changes have to do with internal and external factors

Marx deals with the fact that scientific socialism is built out of capitalism. Socialism isn't about burning everything down and starting over but reviving and fixing the current society in a scientific revolutionary matter. There won't be an instant transformation to communism. Users both faced the question on how to deal with the capitalist nature of society and had to adapt some capitalist fractions to survive and evolve out of it. Same applies to Cuba and Vietnam; they need to fight with the lingerings of capitalism and the new emerging capitalism, and ideologically escaping capitalism which lays down the principles of a dotp. Capitalism is a necessary starting point. Even post dotp ideology will still linger which is why anarchism is insanely srtupid. This is why we shouldn't criticise tanks; they understand how difficult of a situation we are in. and from failed experiments scientific socialists can learn what a big struggle we face. 

Marx's critique of nationalism: Proletarian internationalism is essential. Class struggle starts in the nation state. We need to link up materially with other class struggles across the globe. Fanon's argument gestures towards this direction. We need to take real material steps for our internationalism. Capitalism is already internationalist so we must be too. The bourgeois nation state is an obstacle. We need to organise more. In the US we have no large organisations or parties to donate or support foreign relations because we failed to organise. We down[lay imperialism and attack proletarian leaders abroad. We need to combat leftcoms. 

Socialism must be a transition. To suggest otherwise is utopian and will fail because of ideology. Being a socialist but anti communist is a new type of liberalism. Social democracies democratic socialism market socialism helps the bourgeoisie and isn't a threat to capitalism. Understanding that socialism is the transition helps us understand scientific socialism and historical context. Marx talks about the absurdity of ignoring the transition. 

Regarding worker cooperatives: Marx combats the idea that worker control can exist in capitalism, that the program views as a way of escaping. This represents a new form of reformism. Coops make lives more sustainable but do not threaten capitalism. They still exist in markets and do not threaten the bourgeois power as it is exercised through the capitalists. Reforms don't threaten capitalism but they may help lives. Mutual aid organisations and coops may switch into bourgeois reformism. This dual power can not be a pure strategy or sole form of action as they don’t threaten the state or capitalism. Worker cooperatives can't replace revolutionary struggles. There needs to be a broader debate within party conventions.

Then, I believe it is important to have the authoritarianism discussion. Democracy is at the heart of our society. A system by the people, for the people. In the societies of ancient Greece, it generalised interest in politics as well as great debates in the public square. In our society, it allows us to choose people who represent us, our values ​​and our interests. We can even run for office and represent the interests of our group ourselves. It is, therefore, no surprise that there is a consensus that democracy is a good political regime, at least for our society. But let's say, hypothetically, that a pandemic of a dangerous virus has just hit us, and a quick decision should be made to avert a national disaster. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to give control of the situation to a small group of experts in epidemiology and public health, to make the appropriate decisions, rather than going through a democratic process that follows public opinion? This situation certainly raises doubts about certain parts of our democratic way of making decisions.

This doubt leads me to ask myself a question: Can authoritarianism be preferable to democracy? I believe the answer is yes, though the regime has to be somehow "technocratic". We do not want to fall into a situation like that of the USSR, where Lenin, theorist and leader of the Soviet Union before his death, considered that "Stalin had more power than he could manage and that "He could be dangerous if he were his successor", before he does exactly that, terribly executes the collectivization of farms and persecutes ethnic minorities. It is therefore very important for me to explain my position, to add the necessary nuances and to justify it.

First, it is important to define some concepts on which I base my position. Democracy is a political system in which sovereignty is in the hands of the citizens, in the case of Quebec, in the form of a parliamentary system, with one elected official per district as our suffrage method. Though it would be nice to have proportional representation with 50 other elected members of parliament, that is a topic for another time. Authoritarianism is a little more vague concept, but we can guide ourselves towards an acceptable definition: Before discussing the possible answers to this question, we need to know what authoritarianism is. Juan José Linz, one of the first people to make conceptual contributions on the subject, described authoritarianism as "political systems with limited pluralism, politically unaccountable, without elaborate and guiding ideology, but endowed with specific mentalities, without extensive or intensive political mobilisation, except at certain stages of their development, and in which a leader or, occasionally, a small group exercises power within formally ill-defined but in fact rather predictable limits ” According to him, several other aspects are often present, such as the absence of control of powers, an absence of legitimacy and a restriction of individual freedoms. We can even better define it as a political regime in which sovereignty belongs to a small number of people. It should be noted that this number is not defined, there are several types of authoritarian regimes, just as there are different types of democracies. It is by no means a pejorative term, and the discussion today is about in which context an authoritarian regime can be preferable to democracy in western society. By "authoritarianism may be preferable" I mean specific situations in which our current regime is not effective in terms of fairness, the rationality of decisions made, or efficiency.

Thus, I believe that there are times when authoritarianism is a mode of operation superior to the democratic process, first of all in the sense that the general incompetence of parliamentary representatives harms the proper functioning of society and the well-being of its citizens. Although our elected officials, including our ministers, normally have to clarify the institutions in place, sometimes they do not have much experience or are simply not competent. For example, the selection of ministers is made among the deputies who have been elected, and their competence is not always guaranteed, since their selection is made in consideration of the government towards various aspects of society, in addition to balancing the representation of professional categories and cultures. Ministers are often also appointed according to their popularity, and not according to their actual competence. A good example of a flaw in this selection is the case of Steven Guillbaut, environmental activist and founder of Équiterre, an interest group in favour of environmental change. Steven was appointed heritage minister, even though he had better competence in the field of environmentalism. In the event of a public health crisis, a democratic process based on decisions made by a minister elected by his popularity does not appear to be effective, and may even harm the well-being of the population.

A better way of proceeding on the competence of "decision-makers" is already present in Quebec in the form of a certain technocracy in the ministries. Indeed, senior officials who have years of experience, connections and extensive knowledge in their field, not having been elected but working in the ministry, can influence or even make decisions. Applied as such, it is therefore not a question of a negative concept, as a tyranny of egotistical men, but of the sovereignty of a few officials who act in a well-intentioned way, who make rational decisions based on their years of experience and not their desire to keep their place in the National Assembly. These leaders ’can be replaced if the consensus of their equally capable colleagues so requires.

Second, it is important to add that the whole population being subject to public opinion can be undesirable when it can ostracise a minority group. For example, the third link, a project that was pushed by radio channels to make financial gains only to be taken over by right-wing populists like the Coalition Avenir Québec, has greatly influenced public opinion, which is generally little sought after by citizens making the commute between Québec-Lévis every morning. Here the tyranny of the majority could neglect the effects on the local population surrounding the entrance as well as on the farmers who have agricultural land on the territory where the slip road would pass joining the third link to highway 20. Though it is unlikely to happen because it was made as a bullshit electoral promise by the CAQ to gain votes. It is only one of the many examples, like the segregation of racialized neighbourhoods in the United States by freeways, but it illustrates my point very well. The kind of authoritarianism that I have described as being not based on unreasonably grounded public opinion - at least most of the time - is therefore desirable over democracy when making important decisions. A council of town planners and transport experts would be much better able to find a solution to the congestion problem on bridges than a group of citizens with a biassed view of their experience on bridges, and looking for a quick 'fix'.

Then, it could be argued that an education system that encourages and mandates political education would create a democratic system without the problems mentioned above; the majority of the population would be able to make rational decisions, so in this case, authoritarianism would never be preferable to democracy. To refute this objection, it must first be mentioned that a 'political education' would not solve the problems of today's democracy, for a few reasons:

In the first place, political education could always be subject to the predominant ideology in society, for example, liberalism or conservatism. It would not necessarily empower people to make rational decisions all the time, some people are naturally reactionary or simply lack the time to educate themselves on everything that comes into the public eye. It is nevertheless similar in the case of representative democracy, the ministers can often be overworked by their dedication to several tasks such as debates, political combat, elections, which means that the depth of their file is lacking. They can easily ignore some aspect of a situation and slip their ignorance under the radar. In addition, a political education does not cover environmental problems, town planning and hundreds of other fields in which the citizen or the elected official does not have much knowledge, or at least that required to make a good decision on the fate of society. Second, even if this problem of democracy were solved, the system would still be subject to some public opinion, including the search for a quick solution to a problem, dogmas and rhetoric, the list goes on. Political education cannot be expected to make elected officials as competent as civil servants with years of experience and knowledge of the best decisions to be made. Thirdly, I think it is important to add that this argument would not even attack my arguments, since it interprets it as authoritarianism being always preferable to democracy, whereas it is not the case. I argue for decision-making by well-educated and well-meaning officials for specific problems and situations in which the democratic process is not optimal. I love democracy, but any regime has its limits.

Ultimately, while parliamentary democracy is a desirable system, there are times when it is simply less capable of performing a task than a regime viewed as technocratic or authoritarian. This brings another point about authoritarian socialism in the global south. Historically, authoritarianism in a socialist context has succeeded in creating results that, despite the restriction of individual freedoms, have improved the quality of life of the population. Think of the Bolshevik regime that overthrew the monarchy to fully industrialise Russia in the space of 20 years. In the case of an improvement in the quality of life, one can justify an authoritarian regime. A study made in 19862 showed that people living in socialist countries enjoyed a higher level of health, education and quality of life compared to capitalist countries in a similar stage of development. One could justify the authoritarianism of Marxism-Leninism by citing this argument, considering that it was the prevailing ideology of socialist states at the time. It should also be noted that this ideology could be considered much less authoritarian than its predecessor, feudalism.

Unlike a horizontal communist structure which gives the weight to the population to decide directly on the allocation of public goods, ‘authoritarianism’ reduces the weight on the shoulders of the population; the decision-making pressure is on the shoulders of the dictator and not on those of the population. It makes decision-making efficient, as in the case of Vietnam which made the internet accessible in less than 2 years. In developing economies people can therefore focus on their immediate needs instead of spending time debating democratically. With the centralization of power, there is a reduction in the supply of absolutely non-essential products, which increases the production capacity in other sectors. An authoritarian government can force a shift in production and develop less advantaged sectors, which is usually great for rapidly industrialising a country.

Now, as with anything, there are objections to the points I have made. There are ways to achieve the same goal in a similar context but democratically. First of all, it might be argued that authoritarianism requires repressive control of the population, including limiting freedom of the press and expression, as well as limiting access to information. This argument seems to attack USSR-style regimes, which have undoubtedly been more repressive than was necessary. Here we are mainly talking about the planning of an economy and the collectivization of the means of production to eliminate poverty and industrialise a developing country. It is clear that the repression of the people is not a likeable aspect of authoritarian regimes, and this is not the point I am trying to make, rather on which occasions are authoritarianism more effective than democracy.

Then, it is arguable that political plurality is important, the people have the right to make decisions about the functioning of their society. I agree with this point, different groups need different representation in government, to avoid ostracism or neglect. But again, this is not attacking the right argument, as I do think democracy has its place, though it is not a necessity in the case of a developing country with a poorly educated population that needs rapid industrialization. A similar thing goes for the argument that an authoritarian system is very likely to fail to adapt to changes and after some time, to diverge from the original purpose and to rule only for power. There needs to be a constitution, institutions in place to regulate the power of the sovereign until the necessity of a democratic process.

Having thought about our position, we must now think about the relevance of this question. It is a question, for me, of justifying critical support for past socialist regimes, and of ensuring that one understands certain political concepts that govern society. I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I do critically support Marxist-Leninist regimes like Cuba, Vietnam and China for their struggle to achieve a Socialist society. Of course, there is some repression by the state and imperfect aspects of their model of governance. That’s why it’s called critical, not blind support. 

Understanding authoritarianism also prompts us to understand the place of democracy, freedom as a concept and the importance of the collective good. One needs to know authoritarianism to take a rational stand and either not repeat the mistakes of the past, or learn from the successes of political regimes preceding our representative democracies. It is still important to know that the spectre of anarchy-authoritarianism is not a dichotomy and it is difficult to put a number on the tendencies of different governments throughout our history. Either way, it would be beneficial for our society if our citizens were more involved in public debates to build rationally based opinions on the issues that affect them and their neighbours instead of looking back towards reaction or a dogmatic attitude that plagues our modern democracy. We cannot expect society to function well when its citizens vote against their interests. 

Furthermore, historically the developed socialist (sometimes wrongly called communist) countries arose from a Marxist-Leninist revolution, as the material conditions of the proletariat were too poor, and they were not educated enough to develop the class consciousness necessary to have a full-on revolution. In the case of the USSR, Lenin took on that role, leading a Vanguard party that followed through with a revolution. They then industrialised the country and achieved lower-stage communism (socialism), but the problem came with the class of bureaucrats that arose from that Vanguard Party, they held the power. (I know this isn’t very nuanced and they still had council democracy but hold on.0)

Then you also have to account for western imperialism, the country had to centralise power and create a military to hold back from it, and in the case of the USSR distribute resources to underdeveloped provinces. The people in power after Stalin were not great either, and the development of a decentralised computer-based system that took power away from the bureaucrats would have greatly impacted the level of ‘authoritarianism’ in the union. But this did not happen for a lot of reasons that I won’t get into. 

Despite these outcomes, is socialism inherently authoritarian and will another form of authority replace the state machinery? To arrive at an answer follow the logic of how common ownership of the means of living works out in practice. Common ownership presupposes the decision-making process is under the democratic control of society. In short, a process for the distribution of human needs at a local, regional and global level on the basis of free access and the production for use. The concept of democracy is essential to socialism, as without democracy socialism is unworkable.

But there are a few factors needed to understand. The first one being that educated decisions need to be made as one of the reasons socialism is preferable to capitalism is the better allocation of resources and preservation of the environment. Here an intellectual hierarchy, where experts decide how to approach the distribution or production of certain things is much preferable to just direct democracy. This doesn’t make the system ‘authoritarian’, it just makes it work in the first place. In short, depending on how socialism is approached, imperialism, material conditions, it will always have different outcomes, but historically the ‘authoritarianism’ that was described in western media was way too exaggerated and left out very important factors.

In conclusion, I ultimately believe councils should be the basis of political organisation and should always be subject to criticism, in order to keep a democratic order and prevent mistakes of the past.

A number of Socialists have lately launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.

This is the beggining of a very well-known and controversial text in left-wing circles, On Authority by Engels. It is at the same time dogmatically used by many Marxist-Leninists to ‘shut down’ anarchists, and misrepresented or badly addressed by these anarchists in response. Let’s take the time to analyse this essay and see what we can learn or critique from it.

Engels starts with some context. He says that there have always been a huge amount of liberals, anarchists, and so on, who reject any hierarchy, vanguard party or leader in a movement, be it an international of workers, a revolution or a transitory state to resist western imperialism. Engels thought it was worth investigating the matter since it could be a problem later on, with opportunism and reaction becoming more prominent in supposed leftist groups, and in our modern day not supporting AES countries or even Lenin.

Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination.

Engels’ point is that anarchists use 'authority' pejoratively, as something to avoid, which subordinates a group to another group, beit workers to capitalists or a council to a leader which directs a group to success. Their definition of authority presupposes oppression, a subordination just like under capitalism. They oppose the concept, forgetting the idea itself of the vanguard party, in favour of immediate abolition of the state, without meeting the necessary material conditions for such a society. This is quite the idealist idea, considering all previou existing democracies in their way to freedom, to liberation from the opressors, have had a leader, even the 'democracies' of ancient greece. In those last mentioned, like Athens, there was actually a highest authority. The people in a direct democracy were constantly passing policies and making decisions which contradicted themselves and created chaos. One such example really says a lot about lack of direction: Athens was at war, and one of their ships got stuck in a huge storm. Many citizen-soldiers drowned to their death, getting carried by the waves, and the generals could not save their bodies - something which was very important to the Athenian people - so the assembly voted to put all those generals to death. Only after these said generals were executed did they feel their decision was wrong, so they put to death everyone who led the vote in the first place. These scenarios are why leaders like Pericles were so necessary for Athens, a good orator who could give a direction to follow.

In this case the authority was in the hands of the majority (of citizens, who were themselves a small minority, but this is not important) and their individual will was subjected to the decision of the majority. This decision was ultimately decided by the authority of Pericles, who tried his best to convince the assembly of his decision. It was not always the case, but people generally trusted Pericles since he was an astounding military leader and genuinely cared about the wellbeing of the citizens and the city-state.

In this sense there needs to be a good orator at the head of the worker councils who can lead the masses to a good decision, free of reaction, that follows a party line. Authority in the soviets at the beginning was not really an authoritarian system, it just had a leader pointing the nation in a given direction, to prevent contradictory or harmful decisions from being made. It then degenerated for various reasons, mainly because the framework to contain power in the hands of the majority was not in place at the time, because of the second world war, and of massive instability. Back to Engels.

Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.

Engels then expands on the idea, discussing whether or not it is possible to quickly create a horizontal non-hierarchical system where power is distributed all equally in the hands of the council members. This part is pretty straightforward, it analyzes if the idea pushed by anarchists is one which should be followed.

On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals. Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate vast stretches of land. Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority?

Here, Engels points out that it is quite hard to organize a party, an administrative system without any authority. There needs to be a hierarchy of knowledge; of education. Someone who takes the lead and directs the masses towards common good, towards the most rational decision. This could be in the form of a ‘director’, a member of the worker council who has more experience than a lot of people, and who can advise his team on the best possible solutions to a problem - or as a generally liked and knowledgeable - in matter of theory and practice - member of the council who gets elected secretary at the beginning of every meeting, or for a given period of time.

But this authority does not presuppose subordination, the other ‘subordinated’ members of the group of workers can still give their input, and advance the decision making. There might still be things this leader forgot to take into account, or he can better explain his decision to the people who don’t necessarily understand it. This leader can be held accountable, like in the case of Pericles who was fined and exiled for a while because the people were not happy with his speech (which was understandable, considering he was practically scolding them for making a very bad decision. Though they brought him back to the head of their state after realizing he actually gave really good input. They then elected him again and again until he died).

Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.

Let us take by way of example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more tyrannical than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: “Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate!

Here, Engels argues that the workers are subordinated to the authority of the steam and production process for use, just like they are subordinated to the capitalists. This is because in his time production used steam machines, which needed constant supervision. The collective is subordinated to the socially necessary labor time needed to produce a consumption good or service. So according to an anarchist definition of authority, production itself is authoritative.

This is more or less true in our era, where machines are robotized and steam isn't used as much. It is also possible to hire more people and supervise the machines for shorter periods of time. Though there is still a quota to be met every day to ensure a steady consumption for use, workers cannot expect to find a job just to not work at all, every able person should be able to give to society what they can give, or at least part of it.

If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.

In short, there needs to be leadership to ensure good assignment of productive resources. The labour day can still be shortened significantly in the abolition of production for profit. However, it still needs to be organized to meet certain quotas, and to ensure the production process goes smoothly. This seems like a bad strawman on Engels’ end, but it has some truth to it. Anarchy in production would be the death of the latter. This authority in production is only the quotas needed to be met. Workers can be in a greater number, and work less hours, as long as the production is done to ensure there is not unnecessary scarcity. But I think Engel’s broader point is that this organisation can be done by a council, but it will itself be an authority on the individuals who voted for a different decision.

Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persons interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?

Next, Engels takes the example of a railway to illustrate his point. Let’s deconstruct his argument:

1. The cooperation of an infinite number of individuals is necessary during fixed hours to prevent accidents;

2. This organisation presupposes authority, a very pronounced one, to execute that organization.

But where does he go with this?

But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in times of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.

1. There is a necessity for authority.

As he says, this is just like in ships on the high seas, people need to follow orders of someone who has more experience. There is a necessity for a more well knowledgeable person to take the lead and organize production without possibility of debate, in certain scenarios. Here Engels argues for some kind of ‘technocracy’, something which ensures the most rational decision taking.

When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock the whole world.

I don’t really get this part, he rejects ‘anti-authoritarians’ arguments by claiming they only change the name of the thing they oppose, effectively restating his claims to arrive at a different conclusion. This is something which I certainly partly agree with, anarchists lack acceptance of the need for a technocratic order in certain circumstances, like in the USSR where there was a need to rapidly industrialize a feudal country. - Here there was a possibility of debate on the most rational decision to take, but a leader directed the group towards that decision. The bolsheviks went too far with war communism, and had to roll out the NEP to appease the peasantry. Wanting collectivization at all costs, without a transitional period, is as bad as wanting to instantly abolish the political state - they basically go hand-in-hand, one relies on the other - there needs to be a private sector made of worker cooperatives that gradually get turned into public enterprise at a certain point during the transition to socialism. Though I feel like I might be over reaching. This paragraph just seems to be an ad hominem since Engels was malding at the idealist anarchists of his time.

We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate. We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society.

Here Engels makes an interesting point:

First, that the material conditions of the production process develop the necessity for a certain authority, a leader that coordinates production. It is therefore idiotic to assume that the principle of self-management and autonomy is in all circumstances, inherently ALWAYS a good principle to follow. Because freedom from authority, of self-management, is something that varies, that is relative and which cannot be absolute. Just like freedom of speech, which should end where other people’s right to respect and integrity begins: self-management is a good thing, but it needs directions, a leader, since the democratic process can take time. The most experienced or knowledgeable person in the factory may suggest a way to produce, or in a cybernetic planned economy the input table produced by the computer might give proper directions that the factory workers can then follow. In that case there’s no physical authority, it’s just societal demand.

If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organisation of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the world.

Here he argues his position on the matter, something he would agree with if it was pushed for by anarchists:

1. The social organisation of the future could be different (ie our current industrialized and mechanized production)

2. In this scenario authority could be restricted within the limits of the conditions of production

3. That would be someone taking the lead and giving directions to organize production, within the framework which ensures possibility of self-criticism and stays efficient.

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

Let’s analyse this paragraph. Here he starts by reminding us of what Socialists have agreed on:

1. Socialists agree that the political state will disappear following the social revolution, in favour of more administrative purpose.

2. Public functions will lose political character and become solely administrative functions that ensure production and the planning process are done efficiently, as well as watching over the interests of society.

This is something anarchists lack understanding of, they want a revolution which instantly abolishes the state, before the social conditions that gave birth to it - a dichotomy, a contradiction of class antagonisms-  have been destroyed. They want abolition of all authority. There thus needs to be a certain authority, acts of violent struggle from the dictatorship of the proletariat, over the bourgeoisie, to impose its will upon them and ensure these social conditions are destroyed, for the state to then wither away, in favour of public militias and of those ‘administrative functions that ensure the wellbeing of society as a whole.’

Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.

This last paragraph I have mixed feelings about. It is questionable to assume that anarchists only serve reaction. I believe only their position on authority serves it. In that scenario I think we can have conversations with anarchists, come to an arrangement/consensus with them and consolidate left unity. I can also see how he ‘misrepresents’ anarchism, seeing as this group opposes most authority, but not the imposition of the will of the workers against the bourgeoisie. He only points out the contradictory nature of their beliefs. Authority isn’t an objectively quantifiable thing and its positive and negative aspects vary a lot depending on the context. In that way part of both ‘’sides” generalizes a position.

Having read and annotated this essay, look at some critiques of it. Here is part of one written by user Phalgun on the essay’s Goodreads page. I shortened it to its bare essentials, making sure not to lose any nuance:

However, his proof in reality is chock full of mistakes, most of them essential for the deduction of the conclusion. Some of them are as follows,

1) Anarchists do not oppose the kind of ‘authority’ displayed in the first example. A collective making a decision based on a fair and mutual democratic system which is devoid of hierarchy or a centralized power, is not the ‘authority’ that anarchists despise. Bakunin, the person in the forefront of the movement that Engels is addressing, makes that abundantly clear in his writings.

2) Anarchists do not oppose the kind of ‘authority’ displayed in the third example. Anarchists make a clear distinction between delegating work to an authority of something and being held dominion by authority. A doctor is an authority on medicine. Their suggestions and general advice on illness are in most part to be trusted and we delegate the treatment of our bodies to them in times of poor health. The Bolsheviks held the people they were supposed to represent under their undue and centralized authority. People of their ilk must be opposed. There’s a clear difference between the two kinds which seems to be lost on Engels.

This really seems like a half-tried attempt at refuting Engels’ argument by ignoring the bigger picture, only focusing on one of its aspects. This applies not only to the labor process, railways and ‘ships in the high seas’, but also to decision making. This person claims that the bolsheviks held ‘people they were supposed to represent under their undue and centralized authority’. This couldn’t really be further from the truth. What the bolsheviks did was centralize power in the hands of the vanguard party & soviets, seeing as the masses were mostly uneducated and lacked organizational skills. They did have a revolutionary potential which should never be neglected, but 1917 Russia was a ‘backwards’ country that still had a semi-feudal regime under a monarchy, and most people there were peasants who were illiterate, lacked education and were submitted to servitude. There needed to be a way in which the interests of the working class and peasantry were fought for.

Lenin understood that, making worker soviets the basis of soviet political organization. What needed to be done was subordinate the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois counter-revolutionaries to the bolsheviks. This couldn’t really be done without centralising power in the hands of a leading group, to organise what needed to be done and ensure efficiency in the transition to the socialist state, which would be necessary to eliminate bourgeois interests -social conditions which were the basis of capitalist society and that needed to be ‘repressed’  by strong means - to then achieve communism, the final stage of historical development.

There was still a foundational principle of organisation; soviets. These councils were worker democracy, and they worked well for a while, until that authority could not be further contained, and their power diminished to the point of near abstention from politics for the majority of the otherwise politically active population. Here I concede, I agree that there needed to be a stronger democratic framework to ensure a pure democracy where the chairman only pointed the assemblies toward a direction. - This is also a false critique i hear from right-wingers about Stalin: he was not the highest authority in the USSR and his resignation attempt was denied 4 times by the democratic council. Necessitating a vote for the supposed ‘highest authority’ in the country shows how important the democratic process was for them. -

This would however still be an ‘authority’, someone who understands their theory and practice and corrects mistakes. Soviets should have been better consolidated, and anarchists have an almost correct analysis of that - if we ignore the deeply flawed and idealist conception of all authority as equally bad. This authority also brought significant social and material progress, so I struggle to find a point to vehemently opposing it. It is not ‘inherently bad’, it just needs a more democratic framework to work better and for a longer time. The ‘class of bureaucrats’ we saw arise in the late-USSR would just become a computer able to make incredibly efficient calculations without trying to push its own interests.

3) The second example presupposes a conflict between the ‘authority’ of the passengers and the ‘authority’ of the workers. Furthermore, it lacks specificity in its claim and reason for a need of a strong hand to put the workers in line.

For his next argument, Engels accuses anarchists of arguing in terms of semantics to advance their causes. He equates delegates of the people to envoys of authority and proclaims that changing names does not alter the truth. But by definition, anarchist delegates differ from autonomous representatives who hold power. Delegates can be recalled at any moment and in many traditions of anarchy are limited in their ability to make decisions without the voice of the majority on their side. Rep resentatives, in most cases, can make decisions with impunity with only the fear of reelection and greater authoritative bodies to hold them back.

His next argument against Anarchism comes in form of the support of the transition state, and also by reflection, an attack on the anarchists belief that there shouldn’t be one. That is a core point of contention between Marxism-Leninism and all forms of Anarchism. A difference in ideology which cannot be explained in a review which is already way too long.

Finally, He says that a revolution is the most authoritarian thing there is,A part of the society forcing its ‘authority’ on another, thus implying that the anti-authoritarian Anarchists are not revolutionaries. Here Engel discards his own definition of authority, the one which requires authority to be defined from a dominant position to a subjugated position, and just uses it as a synonym for will. How is a subjugated class fighting for its rights for self-determination a perfect demonstration of ‘authority’? Is a man who defends himself out of necessity also imposing his ‘authority’ over the attacker? And even if it was taken to be an abstract version of authority, whose only prerequisite for existence is an imposition of force, how is it related to the hierarchical authority that anarchists oppose?

Engels ends the essay by denouncing anarchists, proclaiming that they are either confused or counter-revolutionaries thus setting the stage for the actions of the Bolsheviks against the Makhnovist and the Russian Anarchists.

This really shows a lack of self-awareness from anarchists, this person does not try to make a counter-argument, rather pointing a difference in ideology between MLs and anarcho-communists, without substantiation, and then following by claiming that Engels uses a flawed definition of authority. Furthermore, this doesn’t really set the stage for any significant action against anarchists, just for a lack of consideration for what they were saying. They are reactionary and part of their ideas should not be listened to, and I agree this is not a reason to purge them. They are still comrades after all, and they can give valuable input. They just need to understand the need for transition between historical phases of society. Centralisation is essential to quickly develop an agraria feudal land.

This whole critique only assumes a smaller picture, ‘rebutting’ some arguments of Engels and forgetting that the bigger argument is there needs to be some leadership in social and labour organisations to ensure order. Engels wasn’t arguing for ‘totalitarianism’, just in letting a leading vanguard direct the majority towards the common good and to following the core principles of Marxism. This authority needed to be constrained under the framework of worker soviets. That’s all there is to it.

I have a few more things to say about authoritarianism. Historically, the developed socialist republics arose from a Marxist-Leninist uninterrupted revolution, as the material conditions of the proletariat were too poor, and they were not educated enough to develop the class consciousness necessary to have an ‘anarchist’ revolution that started with the abolition of the state in favour of an instant, horizontal structure. In the case of the USSR, Lenin took on that role, leading a Vanguard party that followed through with a revolution. They then successfully industrialised and worked for socialism, but the problem came with the class of bureaucrats that arose from that lack of constriction of authority within Vanguard Party, who held the power. What was lacking was a proper framework. It can also be argued that this class of bureaucrats arose from being planners, which would not be a problem in our days, considering cybersyn.

Then, we also have to account for western imperialism: the country had to centralise power and create a powerful organized military to hold back from it. And in the case of the USSR, distribute resources to less developped republics. The people in power after Stalin were not great either, being revisionist and outright social-imperialist - and the development of a decentralised computer-based system that took power away from the bureaucrats would have greatly impacted the level of ‘authoritarianism’ in the union.

Despite these outcomes, is state socialism inherently bad and wrongly authoritarian and will another form of authority replace the state machinery? To arrive at an answer, we follow the logic of how common ownership of the means of living works out in practice. Common ownership presupposes the decision-making process is under the democratic control of society. In short, a process for the distribution of human needs at a local, regional and global level on the basis of free access and the production for use. The concept of democracy is essential to socialism, as without democracy socialism is unworkable.

But there are a few factors needed to understand. The first one being that educated decisions need to be made, as one of the reasons socialism is preferable to capitalism is the better allocation of resources and preservation of the environment. Here an intellectual hierarchy, where experts decide how to approach the distribution or production of certain things is much preferable to just direct democracy. This doesn’t make the system ‘authoritarian’, it just makes it work in the first place. In short, depending on how socialism is approached, imperialism, material conditions, it will always have different outcomes, but historically the ‘authoritarianism’ that was described in western media was way too exaggerated and left out very important factors.

In conclusion, I ultimately believe councils should be the basis of political organisation and should always be subject to criticism, in order to keep a democratic order and prevent mistakes of the past. Authority, however, needs to exist in order to maintain order up until the social conditions for the emergence of stateless communism are met.  It is foolish to vehemently oppose any authority like a teenager who flees his ‘somewhat strict’ parents. There might be a time in the future where the social conditions make it possible for a transition to the final stage of communism, free of authority. But for the time being, we need to stay rational and materialist with our theory.

Outlying the Basics of the ECP and KP

Let's address two very prevalent arguments against socialism and its inner workings . The first one is the economic calculation problem ; it is a criticism of using financial planning as a substitute for market-based allocation of the factors of production. Von Mises argued that economic planning necessarily leads to an irrational and inefficient allocation of resources. Another problem suggested by the Austrians is the Knowledge Problem. This problem proposed by Hayek suggests that knowledge is dispersed decentrally throughout society, and thus it must exist outside the knowledge of a central authority, i. e. economic planners. The following paragraphs will discuss the knowledge problem and then go in-depth about the Economic Calculation Problem.

Proposed Solutions to the ECP and KP

First, let’s briefly address the Knowledge Problem. We can quantify the demand for regularly consumed goods, simply by asking people, looking at past markets, and determining what we need to produce. The rest of it comes down to linear algebra, which computers can efficiently calculate. Corporations like Walmart have used marketing to determine the demand for the last 70 years - They determine direction by analysing previous markets before setting prices. - Looking at this a few months after writing this paragraph, this seems like a pretty weak argument. I recommend looking for other sources in order to understand this concept better.

Let's now look at the ECP. Consider two feasible methods of producing a commodity to exist. The main question that arises is: which one is more beneficial to the economy? Which one is the rational choice ? Usually, in a market economy, you compare the two techniques and select the cheapest one. If money and prices did not exist, surely it would be impossible to do that, right? This is where the Labour Theory of Value comes into play. You optimise the problem by choosing the method that minimises the labour expenditure. To our argument, Von Mises replies that the use of labour value is impractical for two reasons: the first being that the Labour Theory of Value cannot properly account for non-reproducible resources, and the second being the fact that labour is not homogenous (the Reduction Problem).

Before going further, here is a brief passage from Mises’ Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth explaining the basic concept of the problem: 

“The director wants to build a house. Now, there are many methods that can be resorted to. Each of them offers, from the point of view of the director certain advantages and disadvantages with regard to the utilization of the future building, and results in a different duration of the building's serviceableness; each of them requires other expenditures of building materials and labor and absorbs other periods of production. Which method should the director chose? He cannot reduce to a common denominator the items of various materials and various kinds of labour to be expended. Therefore he cannot compare them. He cannot attach either to the waiting time (period of production) or to the duration of serviceableness, a definite numerical expression. In short, he cannot in comparing costs to be expended or gains to be earned, resort to any arithmetical operations.”

Paul Cockshott has said the following, which I agree with: "I and others have since the late 80s been arguing that the answer is yes. The Mises critique of socialism focused on comparing the costs of alternative ways of making things. Unless you can do that, you can not choose the most efficient. Our response has been not only that labour time is in principle an alternative, which Mises conceded but that with modern computer technology, it is perfectly possible to maintain up-to-date figures for the labour cost of each input to the production process. Using these, workplaces will have data that are as good as prices for choosing between techniques." 

Cockshott also provides further elaboration in his (and Cottrell’s) book Towards A New Socialism. Both of the following refutations to Mises’ argument are from this book, and I do not claim either as an original idea, I am merely recollecting their sayings.

Lets address Mises’ argument that labour is non-homogenous. Here, Mises is correct in saying that different types of labour cannot be directly compared : you cannot directly compare the work of a doctor to that of a computer programmer. 

We must first reduce these types of skilled labour to a common substance, namely unskilled labour. Mises does not believe this can be achieved under socialism ; he believes that the only way this would occur is on an arbitrary basis, however this is simply not the truth. Skilled labour is a produced input; the production process of skilled labour is training. 

Before we go further in explaining the relevance of this, we must first understand how machinery passes on value to the commodities it contributes to. Let’s say we have a machine that takes 100 hours of labour time to build. This machine can only produce 100 commodities before it is totally consumed. The amount of value/labour-time passed onto the product of the machine can be determined by the result of the production time for the machine divided by the amount of commodities able to be produced. In this case, our result is 1, therefore 1 hour of labour-time is passed onto the product of this machinery. 

We have no reason to believe the situation is otherwise with skilled labour ; labour-power is a commodity after all. This principle will be demonstrated with unrealistic figures for simplicity.  Perhaps we have a biologist. The training for this biologist takes 100 hours of labour-time. The biologist will work for 200 hours of labour time. If we plug these values into the equation presented previously : 100 / 200 = 0.5. One hour of labour-time coming from this trained biologist will be worth 1 hour labour-time in addition to the value passed on by the training process, 0.5. We have now demonstrated that we can, indeed, reduce skilled to simple labour.

Mises' other claim is that non-reproducible natural resources cannot be appropriately accounted for if the Labor Theory of Value is to be used. This issue is much more complex than the previous argument put forth. Here is a brief passage from Cockshott and Cottrell’s Towards A New Socialism:

“How is the ‘free market’ price of natural resources determined? The classical answer is that it comes from differential ground rent. In that case the marginal land or oilfield or forest comes free and the cost of production at the margin comes from the labour (and in neoclassical theory, capital) inputs. But the oil, the environment and natural resources from the marginal well is a depletable resource too, and in a market system this depletion has no price. There is only a finite amount of oil, but this is not recognized in its market price. Indeed what we have seen with capitalism has been a reckless destruction of natural resources wherever the resource has been at the margin.”

Labour-Time Accounting

Expanding on that, we need to talk about Labour-Time accounting. Suppose I live in a system where I get 1 hour of social credit for each hour I work, and for this one social credit, I can buy commodities that took one hour to make. If, instead, I am only credited 40 minutes of labour-time credits for working an hour, something is off. If that difference comes in the form of taxes that support society, and I democratically chose to pay those taxes, it's okay. In contrast, if I see that someone else is getting credited with more than an hour for each hour to work, I will be asking myself questions.

Labour time accounting has a presumption of equality and equity. A person cannot get credited for more work than they do. Therefore, its adoption would involve an excellent push for equity, bringing down the hierarchy and gaining equality between race and gender. It eliminates the possibility of unearned income. It makes the moral presumption that labour is the only legitimate source of income.

The point of labour tokens is their push for an obligation on all to work by abolishing unearned incomes; they make the economic relations between people quite evident; and they are egalitarian, ensuring that all labour is counted equally. The last point provided that they were never adopted under the twentieth century's bureaucratic state socialisms. Let's get to how this system would work. 

According to Paul Cockshott, people would have a sort of electronic labour-value card. Credits could only be cancelled out, not circulated. You could not pay credits into somebody else's account, but you could get things from  communal stores.

A socialist society must avoid the temptation to undervalue necessities in communal stores. If they are undervalued, there will be excess purchasing power in terms of labour credits. If bread used 30 million hours to make but was sold for the equivalent of 10 million hours, an excess of 20 million credits would have been issued to the workers. This would not be a good thing. Suppose prices are equal to the labour-time contained in those products. In that case, the differences in sales from production can be used to adjust the planned economy's targets in real-time, reallocating labour from products whose demand falls short of production to those selling out. This would especially work well with our modern computers. 

However, variations between distribution and labour content would still occur in a planned economy, but purely for environmental reasons. If the plan had a constraint to make fossil fuel production decline by 2% every year to protect our environment, then the planning specialists would be forced to raise fuel price above its labour content or ration petrol. In that scenario, those variations are a good thing, unlike in capitalism. 

Now, let's take a look at the communist distribution of goods. This would be viable for products that meet the following conditions: Firstly, decisions can determine the allocation to reduce the waste of resources. When we can easily predict and calculate the demand for a good/service, making them free increases demand up to that limit, and no further. Finally, the resources used in that distribution would otherwise be wasted. For example, the USSR used waste heat to heat homes. In short, the best way to achieve equality would be planning an economy and using labour-time accounting, not free markets. 

I think this would work best for goods purchased regularly such as food items. For consumer goods that need some kind of variety, it would be interesting to dive into worker cooperatives producing according to the plan, being given a quota but with freedom to choose what to produce, in what proportion.

Labour Theory of Value

Classical economists viewed capitalist production from a production standpoint, whereas neoclassical economists used a consumption-based understanding of this kind of economy. Production is the primary focus of classical economics and is focused on production cost. An excellent example of this is Marx's famous M-C... P... C'-M'.  The other difference is the relationship between quantities and prices. Neoclassical economics attempts to show that quantities and prices are mutually determined in all markets. On the other hand, production prices are a completely different set of data.

Then, distribution of those produced goods is also given. It's the rate of profits that represents the provided data. Given quantities and distribution, prices of production and the remaining distributive variable can be calculated. 

Within all societies, the goods needed to satisfy human wants and desires need allocating society's productive forces in objective quantities and proportions. Within all class societies, labour obtains another attribute. In class society, a necessary component in the extraction of surplus-value, creating the surplus product, allows for a reproduction of a society's class relationships. Thus, Marx contends that labour-time is a fundamental component to regulating the reproduction of society."

Finally, a specific distribution of "social labour time in definite proportions" ends in the particular masses of products corresponding to differing societal needs. As with any other class society, capitalist production is subject to the same fundamental labour time regulations. But the capitalist mode of production is built upon generalised commodity production, meaning the overwhelming chunk of labour time goes towards producing goods that don't have a connection to legitimate social needs. Instead, they are produced by private and independent labour processes, each driven by a relative profit motive. These processes don't contribute much to society and are a waste of resources.

For Marx, an exchange is a sphere where the contradiction is "both exposed and resolved.” Exchange is where the independent private labourers are forcibly attached to a social division of labour. Exchange is the sphere in which the contradiction between private labour and social divisions of labour is made clear. Still, since the contradiction is an internality to social divisions of labour, its negation implies the authority of exchange by social labour. The consequences of exchange in Capitalism are the form in which the proportional distribution of labour commends itself. We are left with prices and profits as the immediate regulator of reproduction and social labour-time as the intrinsic regulator of costs and profits and, therefore, reproduction.” The Labour Theory of Value is therefore a valid argument for the socialist planning of economies. It seemed to hold up pretty well, however I recommend reading Ian Paul Wright’s Phd thesis which aims to build a more general, dynamic theory of value, reconstructing the one Marx theorised. 

The first argument many misogynists make against feminism is that women and men are already equal. This argument is fundamentally wrong, so let’s talk about it. This argument is flawed majorly in an empirical stance. Women are 71% of human trafficking victims, ⅓ women are forced into sex or abused by aaprtner every day, not to mention society perceives women as fundamentally different from men. Womens clothes aren't designed for them, textbooks in schools also perpetuate sexist stereotypes, and nearly 113 countries globally don't have laws ensuring that women are paid equal to similarly situated men. 

Then, many people dismiss the existence of the gender pay gap. Let's talk about it. I live in Quebec, where women are, on average, paid 89 cents for every dollar a man makes. But it's important to understand how we arrive at this conclusion. It's found by comparing the median revenue of women and men working a full-time job. It's then not a comparison between people occupying the same job, rather a comparison between every man and woman on the job market. Now, the discussion is a lot more nuanced than that. You'll see people make the stupid argument that women just choose lesser-paying jobs, which is just blatantly false. Traditionally feminine jobs almost always pay less than male-dominated jobs. 

The more female-dominated a career is, the lesser paying the jobs are. Then, even though nursing, which is a female-dominated career, requires the same level of training as bricklaying, the latter on average earn up to 30 thousand dollars more per year. Historically, we have been attributing higher wages to jobs that are said to be masculine, and vice-versa, because of the patriarchal relations in society. Employers see men as more stable and harder-workers than women. As we live in a society where women have to take care of their children, they need to choose jobs with more flexible schedules and that offer better benefits, which usually pay less than other jobs. Furthermore, even when they choose the highest paying jobs in their industries for equal work, they are paid less. As soon as they graduate, men are rewarded with salaries much higher than women. Employers also profile women, thinking they're automatically going to be homemakers and therefore less hard-working, giving them lower wages. This is the case even though a study by the Federal reserve of St-Louis in 2014 has shown that mothers end up being the hardest-working people (love you mom). The last argument I hear a lot is "b-but women don't ask for promotions as often" But no, they ask for promotions at the same rate as men. A study by the Cass Business School has shown women are 25% less likely to gain the promotion they requested. In conclusion, even if discrimination based on gender is technically illegal, it still happens. For the same work, women are paid less and are often underestimated by their employer. We need to do better as a society, and the argument should not be “but we are already equal”, rather how to fix the issue itself. (As always Socialism is the answer)

Anti-feminists fall into whataboutism and want to make the issue about themselves. “But what about male issues? Our suicide rate?” Well, first men commit suicide at higher rates because we are less likely to get or maintain help. This is mainly because society's idea of men has propagated them to be strong and ignore what they feel on the inside. This is the “toxic masculinity” that Feminism advocates against. Second, male issues will be absolved under feminism because feminism advocates for the end of gender stereotypes and the end of gender norms propagated by society. Feminism also cannot be against men because of how oppression works. The patriarchy hurts everyone -including men- but because they hold  the power of society men cannot be oppressed by the patriarchy that feminism fights against.

Then we have the famous argument about false rape allegations, that ‘feminism does more harm than good’. This is factually wrong and for a couple of reasons. Feminism has done far more to achieve equality than pretty much any other movement with the exception of the civil rights movement. Let’s get to the part about false accusations. So with the growth of feminism and 4th wave feminism as a whole the amount of rapists convicted has gone up and the amount of rapes occuring has gone down. So far false rape allegations make up around 2-5% of total allegations of rape, which is still a lot but not as much as people want to fear-monger it as. People want to use these false allegations to fear-monger feminism as a type of evil, but it is anything from that. Here is a goood source on the rape cases and stats that would help your claim: (Sexual Assault Statistics). Furthermore, proving a case of rape is extremely difficult, so it’s insanely difficult to have accurate numbers. It’s important to note that we can just counter-argue that many rapists may have gone free because the judge did not believe the victim’s story. See how that works?

This is by no means an extensive analysis of feminism, but here is my concluding take. Feminism is great and necessary, and it has to be intersectional; it needs to include BIPOC and trans women, to combat all systems of oppression and create a more just, equal society.

Now, I believe people who do not have a uterus should not have a say in how abortion is treated. However, I know this is quite a weak argument, so let’s settle down and actually talk about abortion. I mainly used Oliver Niehaus’s document since my stand is quite similar to his.

Let’s start with my main argument for the legality of abortion. Let’s say you’re driving your car at 150mph on the highway. Way over the speed limit. You enjoy the feeling of driving fast, but acknowledge the fact that there might be grave consequences following your decision to drive fast. The first one being crashing and killing yourself, the other involving crashing into a woman’s car, severely injuring her. You decide to drive fast and reckless anyway, because it feels good in the moment. Unfortunately you crash into that said woman, causing her to need a bone marrow transplant in order to survive. You are the only available donor. Without your bone marrow, she will die.

 The question becomes, can the state force you to use your bone marrow to save the life of the other person, whose current state is a direct result of your reckless action. You may be starting to see the parallel I’m making with pregnancy and this gets out of the way the most powerful objection, in my opinion, to bodily rights arguments which is the responsibility objection. So to clarify, just like the mother is the reason the foetus is dependent on her for survival, so is the reckless driver the reason the injured person is dependent on their body for survival.  This is the basic premise of the argument for legal abortion.

Another argument is the Organ Use Objection. Basically, the argument goes as follows. The pro-lifer will say, “you can’t compare donating a kidney or bone marrow to pregnancy because the primary purpose of those organs is for my body not someone else’s but the uterus’s primary function is to gestate another human being. But my kidneys aren’t meant for other people.” 

So I ask one question when prompted with this objection. Who exactly is the uterus meant for? For sure,  it’s meant for foetuses but which ones? Just the ones the mother conceives, or all foetuses? In other words, let’s say that a woman is impregnated via in vitro fertilisation without her knowledge. Meaning it’s not her foetus. She is not biologically related to it. So she’s pregnant with a foetus that isn’t biologically hers. Could she get an abortion? Seems like an odd question. If you’re against abortion in all other cases, this would be an odd exception and I agree. So if you think that she should be required to carry that foetus to term despite it not being biologically her foetus and the process not being natural, then the unnatural nature of a kidney or bone marrow transplant has no moral bearing on the situation, as you just admitted that the uterus is designed to gestate all foetuses, not just the woman’s own foetuses, the same way your kidney would be designed to filter all blood, not just your own. So that’s the response to the organ use objection. That’s the argument. And acknowledging that the organ use objection doesn’t hold validity, then in order to say that if the woman is forced to use her body to sustain the foetus, then once that child is born, if the newborn needs a bone marrow transplant that only the father can provide, you must be in favour of the state forcing him by law to donate his bone marrow. 

Then, we like to pull an Uno reverse card. Let’s look at why conservatives should actually be in favour of legal abortion. They’re usually deontologists, meaning they believe the morality of actions is determined by the action itself, not the outcome. We can see that across many different political areas -- notably when regarding voting laws and systematic racism-. Let’s take the trolley scenario. In the case of deontologists, pulling the lever would be wrong as even though in its outcome it may have saved someone, doing so is deliberately killing someone. “The action itself does not justify the outcome”. The fact that the result of their inaction has killed 4 people more than if they took action is irrelevant. They also believe in individual rights, which include unalienable ones. 

Let’s extend that to some other rights. The inalienable rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Pursuit of Happiness was derived from 17th Century English Philosopher John Locke who originally said Life, Liberty, and Property, and as can be seen, by many early documents and Jefferson himself, Pursuit of Happiness was the pursuit to own property as that was what made them happy. 

So the right to own property is one of the inalienable rights, meaning it cannot be infringed upon, not even to save another’s life. You are not required by law to give up your house to save another’s life. And your body is an extension of your property as you essentially own yourself. Therefore you have an inalienable right to self-ownership. You cannot be required to use your body to save the life of someone else as I mentioned.

 Therefore, since the right to self-ownership is inalienable, can the government violate that right to save someone’s life? That seems to not follow deontological ethics which if you believe you can’t violate the rights of one person to save others then this is clearly a contradiction. 

How about masks and lockdowns? Both reduce the spread of COVID-19 and save lives. However many conservatives believe the government shouldn’t be able to mandate either because the government can’t violate your individual rights to save other’s lives. Therefore can the government violate a woman’s individual rights to save the life of a foetus? It seems to be logically inconsistent to believe that the government can’t violate your individual rights when it comes to those other scenarios but can do so when it comes to a woman and her child. Another argument is that because the foetus needs the woman’s body to survive that therefore it’s entitled to it. 

But then I quickly ask, from a conservative’s perspective, do you really believe needs constitute rights? Healthcare, housing, and food are all human needs for survival but it would be accurate to say that most conservatives don’t believe those should be automatically given to you just because you need them.

Let’s tackle yet another important issue: systemic racism. Below is a lot of research on systemic racism, proving its existence. Now, in this day and age, racial bias and discrimination is still a huge issue in society. It has been and will continue to be one until a fix is found. The main issues lie on the state apparatus itself that was built upon white supremacy and slavery. Thousands of people are protesting every day to put an end to it, and those protests are getting repressed by the authorities. Black, indigenous & people of colour are oppressed by the unjust system. Most of the time, this oppression comes in the form of systemic racism. We need to understand how it happens, and the ways to deal with it. This is quite a touchy subject but I have done in depth research on this topic, and found many reliable sources that support my claims. 

Defining

To understand how big of an impact systemic racism has, we first need to understand what it exactly is. British Columbia’s office of the human rights commissioner defines systemic racism as patterns of behaviour, policies or practices that create and maintain the power of certain racial groups over others, or reinforce the disadvantage of certain racial groups. This can be observed in the socioeconomic situation of people with different racial backgrounds, policing, education and housing of people of colour. In short, systemic racism is prejudice from a race against another race, from the institution. It’s present in healthcare, education, policing, living conditions and many, many other areas. Below are detailed definitions of racism and institutional racism.

Defining institutional racism: This is the racial inequity within institutions and systems of power, such as places of employment, government agencies, and social services. It can take the form of unfair policies and practices, discriminatory treatment, and inequitable opportunities and outcomes.

By Law Title 6 of the CiviAct states “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

rac·ist

/ˈrāsəst/

adjective

1. prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalised.
   "we are investigating complaints about racist abuse"

noun

1. a person who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalised.

Observation

The argument about systemic racism has to start with an observation and acknowledgement of white privilege. Many white people think that white privilege is not real, and deny the existence of systemic racism. This thought is just plain wrong, and there is plenty of evidence that suggests the existence of these two concepts. The main argument that suggests the existence of white privilege is related to police brutality, how differently cops treat people of colour and white people. The george floyd case and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement greatly rose the public attention on the matter, and consequently more and more people are fighting to end discrimination.

Fatal Shootings

According to The Guardian's database, in 2016 the rate of fatal police shootings per million was 10.13 for Native Americans, 6.6 for black people, 3.23 for Hispanics; 2.9 for white people and 1.17 for Asians. As a percentage of the U.S. population, black Americans were 2.5 times more likely than whites to be killed by the police in 2015. Another study found that unarmed blacks were 3.49 times more likely to be shot by police than were unarmed whites.The mortality rate of legal interventions among black and Hispanic people was 2.8 and 1.7 times higher than that among white  the 1people, and dblack people were 2.8 times more likely to be killed by police than whites. They also concluded that black people were more likely to be unarmed than white people who were in turn more likely to be unarmed than Hispanic people shot by the police. A 2020 study found "strong and statistically reliable evidence of anti-Black racial disparities in the killing of unarmed Americans by police in 2015–2016. Many more statistics will be provided later on.

White Privilege

The Capitol Attack of January 6th, 2020 is another great example of white privilege. All those terrorists, rioting for no good reason whatsoever, beat a cop to death with a fire extinguisher, tried to suppress democracy and disrupted congress. Police officers literally let them in, opened the march, helped people down the stairs and did not resist at all. If the rioters were people of colour, protesting for equality and an end to police brutality, they would have mobilised a good portion of the emergency response unit, lots of people would have been killed and they would have been automatically labelled as terrorists by the Trump administration.

For example, during the peaceful George Floyd protests of 2020, many soldiers were mobilised to ‘prevent an attack’ and police officers assaulted civilians, used force, tear gas and their batons. Peaceful protesters were held at gunpoint, just because of their cause and the colour of their skin. No argument against this can be remotely close to being correct, as there are even more studies proving it than the three mentioned above.

History & Redlining

Now, let’s expand on that notion, and address systemic racism. Since it primarily affects black people, let’s take a look at some history and sociology. In the 1600s, lots of people were brought from Africa to the USA, to serve as slaves for rich plantation owners. When those people eventually got freed, they were extremely poor and had nowhere to go but secluded neighbourhoods that evolved in the modern day low income areas commonly referred to as ‘ghettos’. The thing is, most of those people never had a chance to get higher education or to get out of that situation, because of various factors. All that is a vicious circle that gives white people an advantage in the current system. More on that later.

“When well-qualified minority homeseekers contact housing providers to inquire about recently advertised housing units, they generally are just as likely as equally qualified white homeseekers to get an appointment and learn about at least one available housing unit. However, when differences in treatment occur, white homeseekers are more likely to be favoured than minorities. Most important, minority homeseekers are told about and shown fewer homes and apartments than whites.

“This difference—or net measure— provides a conservative, lower-bound estimate of systematic discrimination against minority homeseekers, because it not only subtracts random differences from the gross measure of white-favored treatment, but may also subtract some differences that reflect systematic reverse discrimination. Gross measures of discrimination receive less emphasis in this report than in past national studies because analysis over the past 25 years strongly suggests that they reflect a lot of random differences in treatment, and that net measures more accurately reflect the systematic disadvantages faced by minority homeseekers.”

Black renters who contact agents about recently advertised housing units learn about 11.4 percent fewer available units than equally qualified whites and are shown 4.2 percent fewer units.

In 2016, the median wealth for black families was $17,000-$20,000, which is comparable to the median wealth of White families as of 2016 which was $171,000. It is important to recognize that 62% of median wealth is designated to home ownership; which African Americans were denied from the span of 1934-1968 by the federal housing administration through the use of redlining; and currently are being denied after various studies have come out. After an urban study in 2012 it was found that minorities were shown fewer houses than White Americans. It is also important to recognize that these white and blak families were equally qualified for the homes that were denied to the black families. This is happening on a nationwide scale.

These factors as well as the disproportionate effect of redlining (even after its ban) led to a very little amount of African American families owning their own homes. This is again a specific example of the existence of systemic racism still affecting the black community today. It also ties itself with the next chapter.

Capitalism

Furthermore, we live in a capitalist mode of production. This comes at the expense of oppressing not only the working class, but ethnic minorities as well. A study by Prospect found that the top 10% of white families own almost everything in the United States. Everything has a profit incentive, and it is usually at the benefit of white, powerful and rich people who have had it way easier. White people hold much more capital than black people, making them powerful and able to keep up a racist status-quo. 

People of colour are, on average, paid less than white people with the same job, and are less likely to receive the promotions they ask for. This affects their living conditions, funding of education and healthcare in their area. Let’s take a look at how systemic racism affects education, housing, healthcare and the policing of black neighbourhoods.

Education and housing are relative to each other. In the United States, people of colour are way more likely to live in low-income areas, as mentioned earlier. Their neighbourhood is classified as dangerous, their houses are falling apart, which contributes greatly to bring down their property value. Since schools are mostly funded by property taxes and donations in their area, they tend to offer a worse education, less services and a worse experience in low income areas, since the funding they receive is way less than schools in wealthier areas. Edbuild researchers found that non-white school districts in the united states get 23 billion dollars less in funding, despite having the same amount of students. Consequently, black students tend to drop out more often, and earn lower wages. This is a vicious circle that consists of black people being disadvantaged because of the system.

Service Funding

For example, rich white neighbourhoods have people donating to the schools and paying more property tax for the school, which makes education many, many times better than in poor areas. Expanding on that, offering black people a lesser education value means they end up getting lesser-paying jobs, so they have to resort to other ways of subsistence than working, like making and selling drugs on the street, shoplifting the basic items they need and other means of subsistence. More on that later.

Policing

Now let’s address the policing situation. We can’t forget that the police was originally an establishment that consisted of civilians serving as slave patrols, and defending not the people, but property. 

Since black people are disproportionately less wealthier than white people, their neighbourhoods tend to be subject to a lot of violent crime, drug trafficking and shoplifting, just to support themselves. This loops back to the education and housing problem I had mentioned earlier. 

Police officers consequently patrol black neighbourhoods a lot more, which raises the rates of arrests and use of violence by a great margin. Black drivers are 30% more likely to get pulled over by a cop, and lots of black people experience harassment and profiling by the police. This is mainly because of their right to stop-and-frisk. They are able to harass people for no valid reason, suspicion or call. The main victims of stop-and-frisk are black people. They could just be walking on the sidewalk, minding their own business and get arrested without a warrant or suspicion. A notable instance of systemic racism that directly targets a minority group is the policing system in effectiveness with unarmed conflict arising. Over the course of the past 6 years the police have killed 1001 unarmed people. (unarmed-as in they have no weapons on them at the time). Of these unarmed people 452 were white, 336 were black, 201 were Hispanic/Latino, and the remaining were a mix of different races. The key point I want to focus on in this example is the population disparities when compared to the deaths of these unarmed people. The African American community makes up 13% of the population but are 33% of the victims of unarmed killings by the police. The Latino/Hispanic community makes up 18.5% of the population but are 20% of the victims of unarmed killings by the police. Finally the white community makes up 60% of the population but are victims of 45% of unarmed killings. I see many conservatives argue that white people are killed more by the police, but it's a question of proportion, not quantity. 

Living Conditions

To expand on that, let’s talk about how their living conditions affect their actions. Your actions and perception of the world is determined by your living conditions and surroundings. Less fortunate people see the world differently than more privileged people; they only think to subsist. Drugs, sex work and all other things that are usually frowned upon by society are usual in those areas, as they use them to survive. Without those living conditions, and with the proper help, they would be able to work usual jobs and fit in the narrative of what society considers to be ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’. 

There is no doubt that the criminal justice system is unjust, with black people getting unfair and unequal sentences for the same crime a white person could have committed. Given that black people make up 13% of the population, they represent about 40% of the prison population. That’s because if a white and black person each commit the same crime, the black person has a higher chance of being arrested, and convicted. Their sentences are on average 20% longer. Actual empirical data and evidence will be provided in studies later in the document. The problem with that is clear, and reforms should be made to fix it.

People of colour are heavily discriminated against in healthcare too. According to a 2012 study, 67% of American doctors have a bias against african-american patients, refusing treatment or prioritising white patients.

As mentioned earlier, hospitals and schools are funded the same way, with property taxes. Hospitals in low-income areas are well less funded and staffed with practitioners with little to no experience. Even black doctors experience it in the healthcare industry; they are less likely to receive government grants for research projects. This leaves a lot of African Americans vulnerable to developing stress-related health issues later in life.

Fixing The Issue

Now, let’s go over actually addressing and fixing this issue. It’s clear that we cannot achieve that by being polite. The first thing to do is to stand up against racism. When you see something, say something. It will not solve itself. We all need to have a role to play, and actually put something on the line. Being intentional, clear and concise about the actions we want to take will greatly benefit a movement. 

Education is a great aspect of solving this problem, as ignorance is the key thing that fuels racism. Instead of bashing others and participating in ‘cancel culture’, we should all strive to educate others on the subject, to get them on our side instead of literally suppressing them from society. 

We should advocate to our employers to take a stand against racism, and support black owned businesses in our area. The more wealth and power we have mobilised, the better equipped we are to fight racism. Raising funds for organisations and voting for officials that fit our narrative is very important too, so these two actions should be greatly considered. The more power we have to fight the system, the more will be done for humanity. Peacefully protesting in mass can also work well to put pressure on the government and show them what we think of their broken system. 

At the end of the day, putting an end to systemic racism is not realistic within capitalism, or at least modern day late-stage capitalism - aka cronyism. With all the data and evidence I have shown, it is undebatable that systemic racism is real, and affects millions of people. If you care about the benefit of humanity and human rights, make sure you take action to put an end to systemic racism, because a single person cannot achieve it alone. We must group up, and fight. Remember, educating people and getting them on your side will always be much more valuable than stomping and bullying them for their actions. I am currently doing research on systemic racism towards indigenous people in Quebec, so I will follow up on this chapter in the future.

Conservative Racism: 13/50

Let’s look at one of the main arguments used by racists to justify their behaviour, the 13/50 statistic: “Black people make up 13% of the population yet commit 50% of violent crime”. Regardless of how many people of one race doesn’t justify the surplus in murder of one race in specific. The main point of this argument is that the entirety of the population can be applied to a characteristic of less than 1% of the population. This is a blatantly racist take, and even debating human rights on the basis of perceived violence fills me with disgust. But I believe it is necessary to analyse this unhinged, unfounded claim.

Most of the time when people throw 13/50 out they are doing it to imply a genetic difference between the races, even though there is no evidence and will never be evidence. The vast majority of black violent crime happens in poor, overpoliced, gang flustered, urban, and overpacked areas.

Black crime in america used to be very low because of slavery; and blacks were enslaved. After slavery ended, the Jim Crow began, black crime was low and was not major in any violent way. There was a great migration from blacks in the south to  the north. When millions of poor and discriminated people move many conditions expand and arise. They had to live in ghettos with the Irish and the italians. In the early 20’s there was a massive rise in the Irish and Italian crime rate. When you are dealt with shit ass hands and no way to improve, criminality is the way you get ahead in life. That's the way that the Irish and Italians felt in these ghettos. At this time the drug prohibition and alcohol prohibition exploded the gang, drug, and crime rate. In regards to black violence there was very little gang wise.Italians and Irish were dubbed “white” in 1940s,

The beginning of black gangs are associated with the terrible state of the urban area where they lived. Gangs arise from the lack of wealth, education, and governmental help. Also because of the equality not being given to darker skin tones the African Americans after the Irish and Italians left were the only ones in these “ghettos”.

At this time, World War II rolls around, and African Americans, Italians, and Irish people all serve in the armed forces. And after these black Americans came home, they were not given the same benefits as white, irish, and italian war veterans. The idea of the American dream, nuclear family, new generation, was all promised to veterans after they had come back from serving in WW2. The USA built out suburbia to fulfil a promise to these WW2 vets. Veterans were given homes and education. But not for blacks. Redlining was still happening, and black Americans were being denied places in suburban areas which is why you see the majority of blacks maintained in urban areas and the majority of whites in suburban areas. As the Irish and Italian ethnicities left the urban cities, blacks were left with running the gangs.

So now that we have established that Black Americans were segregated, impoverished, gotten the end of the stick by the government, and began to form gangs because of these factors; let's talk about the stats of 13/50.

If you have a country that likes drugs but won’t yet you sell them, then they will be sold by criminals. These plugs (who were predominantly black) were reliant on gang structures and pre-existing criminal networks. These networks that were left by the Irish and Italians were handed to african-americans who now had to control them.

In spite of overpolicing these gangs have continued to thrive and maintain a growing capital from contraband. When discussing black on black crime, these murders are not negligent or hasty, gang crimes are warfare. Warfare that American policies created the conditions for and capabilities for. White America pushed redlining, the war on drugs, did nothing for ghettos, and the crime bills. So why 13/50? Because poor people commit crime at a far higher rate, a large portion of homicides are done by gang violence left to the black community by the Italians and Irish, poor educational funding , because of lack of education these students turn to gangs to make money.

The communities themselves care more about throwing people behind bars than actually addressing the issues at hand.  If you take into account all of these factors, then black people are behaving in the exact ways that you would expect them to behave according to academics and scholars. 55% of the homicides in the 13/50 statistic are gang-related for black americans. For the white community, it's 4.7%. You need context to analyse the number, not just throw them around. Keep in mind those numbers account for the number of arrests, not a number of incidents. We have seen previously that black people are disproportionately more likely to get arrested without proper reason.

War on Drugs and Crack-Cocaine

Another example of systemic racism and corruption in the criminal justice system is the disparities of powdered vs cracked cocaine possession. Crack-Cocaine was an epidemic in the 1980s in poor urban areas. Crack was a solid rock of cocaine that was cheaper to produce and sell. Crack rocks were also very easy to spread and smoke. These urban areas, due to redlining, were predominantly African American. According to a 1999 census, 70% of African Americans and Hispanic Americans live in urban areas. The density of Cracked-cocaine in urban areas was predominantly used by African Americans in the ’80s. 

Chemically, Crack and Powdered Cocaine are Identical. Yet, the sentencing was at an increasing disparity. For 5 grams of Crack Cocaine, a person would get the same 5-year minimum sentence as 500 grams of Powdered cocaine.  This disparity has since been suppressed by the Obama/Biden Administration who lowered the rating from 1:100 to 1:18. Still a disparity nonetheless but much lower.

This disparity was not because of the potency of the cocaine. This was blatant racism in the justice system. Because crack was predominantly used in the urban areas, minorities such as Latinos, Hispanics, and African Americans, were disproportionately affected by these policies. This led to the higher incarceration rate of African Americans. With this incarceration rate rising the single motherhood rate had increased in the Black community to just over 40%. This rise of single motherhood eventually led to the violent crime disparity among young black men and young white men.

We now have a clearer picture of systemic racism.