Libertarians, once synonymous with anarchists, are (supposedly) not beholden in theory to any institution for its own sake. Yet there is a tendency even among those who endorse the freed market to favor equilibrium first, and equality second. Ill quote a blog post by n8chz (anagory.wordpress) here: The market process is a process that produces equilibrium, not equality. If equilibrium is a survivable state, then agorism should be enough. I won’t commit to the idea that agorism is enough without testing the market equilibrium it creates for survivability. Many current arguements for the freed market would lead to favor the ‘equilibrium’ spoken of here, the equilibrium so beloved by most libertarians, and one that leads to market fundamentalism and backdoor neoliberalism in practice. As the market is a process which is not shy of creating many institutions, either through the cash nexus or otherwise, I am intrigued by the theory that n8chz refers to as polymacroeconomy; that is, let the individual choose which economy to take part in. If I understand it right this would make the free market only one economy of many. I like to think of social anarchists as favoring sovereignty among economies (or, put more simply, having no single economy be sovereign), an interesting alternative to market anarchists favoring of sovereignty among communities (having no single community in the economy be sovereign). What I mean by that is that I understand most market anarchists to endorse one macroeconomy, the so-called ‘freed market’, and favoring free interaction among polities and collectivities inside that macroeconomy. In other words, the market anarchists want society to be able to set up their own grid apart from the Dominant Grid enforced by the State and capitalism. In contrast, the social anarchists want to do away with all Grids entirely, or at least a society where Grids can be shut on and off or swapped in as fluid a way as possible. I believe such a setup strongly requires a widespread nexus of communal property and a stable occupy/use infrastructure as a regulatory check on the possible rise of private economic power dynamics. But still, this is only theory. This I’m afraid may lead to a fundamental disagreement among both market and social anarchists at first, but I believe it can be overcome, but only through the exploration and establishment of social anarchist economic activity as described above, sovereignty not only among economies, but between economies, and between individuals. How that comes about would on the surface resemble the agorism described by many libertarians, but I believe the answer lies within the continued spread of antiestablishment communal property and a decentralized planned economy where the ends is not simply ‘voluntarism’ for economic actors, but something akin to a ‘vanguard with peer-review’.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 16:24:24 +0000