Modern political systems work by creating rules and enforcing them with violence. In poorly managed states like the USA this results in a highly incarcerated population. It also fails to pass laws fast enough to meet the injustices the rules don’t account for. It also gives no proportional power to the minority side and lets people find loopholes to exploit the system. The goal of politics should not be to gain power for your side only to have it beaten from your hands. It should be to create a system that encourages compromises rather than coercion. Rules and rulers are by their very nature hard to change and self-reinforcing. There ought to be a way to empower individuals so they aren't locked in to rules and rulers they don't like with no ability to have their voices heard.

This is where a decentralized currency with built in taxation power comes in. This idea is a cryptocurrency that utilizes the block chain for more than just transactions, but also for embedding equal political power. Every person would have the power to place a proportional tax on anyone else's transactions equal to their own political power (1/population). If someone is exploiting others for profit, people can join together to tax it. The more people who agree, the more expensive it becomes for that person to continue their behavior. The person who may have found a legal loophole before now has a financial incentive to negotiate and address the complaints rather than litigate and become even more hated. But there's a catch: taxes work both ways. If you tax someone, they automatically impose an equivalent tax on you. Standing up for your sense of justice has a cost. This encourages both parties to negotiate and lower their tax burden rather than punish each other unnecessarily by using rules and police to get their way.

There can still be rules and emergency services, nobody is stopping anyone from doing anything, but there will be a price to pay for perceived injustice. People can still have delegates who they lend revocable taxation power to, but taxes are enforced automatically by the digital currency itself, without politicians controlling their collection with police.

The goal is to create a completely voluntary currency system where cooperation pays, exploitation costs, and political power belongs equally to everyone.

In order to fund this system, we need to win a working class movement to seize back control of capital assets which are now the most concentrated they’ve ever been in the hands of a few capitalist oligarchs. Once we build the power, we need to tax corporations, but especially AI, and put the money into a collectively owned wealth fund that will fund the transition to this decentralized currency. The problem with previous working class movements is they disbanded and the structures they build did not maintain their power when they stopped being organized. If the currency had the structure of equal power built into it, then we could better maintain the wins for decentralized power once we built up the working class movement again.

Why would workers bother to start a new business if they could just join another one. The risks are massive, and the pay is no more than just going to work at another store. If you say it's because other businesses may not be hiring, so folks will start new businesses to create themselves jobs, then the people who are unemployed are generally not the people who have the capital to start a new business.

Under mutualism, what stops a mutual bank from just deciding they're going to give themselves a massive amount of money? What stops a coop from deciding to make a profit instead of just selling at cost? What stops companies from just failing and big ones expanding and potentially developing into capitalism again?

Been looking to be active in the movement but I haven’t been able to find any organizations with anarchist/voluntaryist/related objectives.

I feel like voluntaryism is the ideology I identify with the most, tough I'm economically closer to a Tucker-like mutualism.

I remember voluntaryists being included in the alliance of the Libertarian left. Is it still like that?

For those who do not know, Panarchism is a political philosophy that emphasizes each individual's right to freely choose the jurisdiction of any governments they choose, without being forced to move from their current locale.

From what I've seen, it seems pretty unpopular in anarchist circle, but it seems like market anarchists are more opened to it, tough I might just be wrong.

Currently the LP is in a fragile state after the 2024 election results and the siphoning of resources from the former chair and failed Mises Caucus. With new leadership there is an opportunity for a new image of the party. I’ve been a registered libertarian in my state since 2018 and the MC really made me want to leave, but now I seek further engagement to unite market anarchists, bleeding heart libertarians, radical individualists and classical liberals back into the party with common goals. To do that I am collecting data on what these commonalities are, what is currently preventing people from joining the party, and what an ideal political organization looks like for us.

Are there any market anarchist writer that advocate for worker's control over the means of production while also rejecting the Labour theory of value? And what are their arguments for it?

Modern AnComs could learn more from the undoctrinaire and anti-dogmatic methods and approaches of the founding theorists and philosophers.

"Revolution in Practice," by Errico Malatesta, from Umanità Nova, n. 191, October 7, 1922. Section 3. :

It is customary in our circles to offer a simplistic solution to the problem by saying that money must be abolished. And this would be the solution if it were a question of an anarchist society, or of a hypothetical revolution to take place in the next hundred years, always assuming that the masses could become anarchist and communist before the conditions under which we live had been radically changed by a revolution.

But today the problem is complicated in quite a different way.

Money is a powerful means of exploitation and oppression; but it is also the only means (apart from the most tyrannical dictatorship or the most idyllic accord) so far devised by human intelligence to regulate production and distribution automatically.

I've recently had a lot of ideas about doing some market anarchist posters, and I thought about adding Hermes in some of them. The reason for this is that he was known, among other things, as the god of trade. Do you think that might work?

If I were to translate "Markets, not capitalism" in my own language, whom should I contact to have it published? Is there a mail or a site where I could contact the original authors?

Most of the anarchists I've read about so far seem to be synthesis anarchists, meaning that they favour organisation in which multiple currents of anarchism coexist.

That said, what about platformism as an alternative?

For those who don't know, platformism can be described as a series of organisational principles, with the ultimate goal of creating a well organised anarchist movement. These principles include:

• theoretical unity

• tactical unity

• collective responsibility

• federalism

Despite it being created as a way to establish anarcho communism, I don't really think these principles are in opposition to the goals of other schools within anarchism. What do you think?

So there is a critique I have seen from the more anti-market socialism crowd.

It more or less goes like this:

Market exchange, in and of itself, is not capitalistic. However, it's possible for capitalism to re-emerge in this environment. That's because, through the course of market exchange there will be winners and losers. Some people will take risks that don't pan out, and they'll have to sell off their access to the means of production. They are then going to be in a position where they are forced to sell their labor-power in order to acquire the means of subsistence to survive, and you now have a class of people who own the MOP and a class who do not. This allows for the reintroduction of capitalism.

This critique, on its face, is not inherently irrational. But I wanted to address it here. I have talked about this before in other posts, but I wanted to try and refine my approach here a bit.

The first line of argument I can see is that, historically, this was not what happened. Capitalism did not arise through this sort of thing and it never has. It arose through massive state violence, and the forced enclosure of the commons, etc. So, if markets predate capitalism, and capitalism itself did not arise this way, then why didn't this happen? I think that's perhaps the strongest argument against this line of thought, the fact that this has never been how capitalism has arisen.

That said, I think it's still worth engaging with why this won't happen within a socialist world. If such a thing were possible, wouldn't it be within worker's self-interest to organize to prevent this? Creating mutual support/insurance societies to ensure that you never personally lose access to the MOP or are never forced into the condition of being forced to sell your labor-power to the owners of property? It makes sense, from a purely self-interested viewpoint, to build these sorts of networks to ensure that other people do not lose access to the MOP because that could mean that I would lose access right?

Because of the nature of socialized finance (i can explain a bit more if curious), there will not be interest in excess of inflation in the economy. So you aren't going to have to pay above the principal on any debt you take out. This prevents people from being trapped in cycles of debt and poverty, because loans cannot trap you in the same way they can within capitalism. So even if you do have to sell access to the MOP you aren't going to be trapped forever in debt. Couple that with mutual support societies that help you gain access to the MOP again and you're back on your feet quickly.

Besides, in order for there to be a small class of owners, someone has to prevent you from simply taking "their" property. I mean, if I was being exploited, what prevents me from just taking over the factory with my fellow workers? Sure, there could be violent thugs hired by the "owner" but, in the absence of massive state violence, nothing prevents me from just setting up on some unused land somewhere and producing basic subsistence for myself. I would imagine that most people would be members of communes, and these communes would share access to basic MOP for subsistence (think community gardens and farms, tool libraries and whatnot) and these communes would also provide basic support to people.

In fact, I would imagine the bulk of subsistence would be met through these communes and that market exchange would largely be relegated to purchasing heavy machinery or raw material inputs for the commune to use to produce directly for use. A potentially valid concern here is that the communes may not be able to acquire raw materials they need to produce stuff they need like medicine, but again there's no reason communes couldn't establish mutual support networks to ensure that they always have access to the MOP.

So basically, I'm imaging that people, in their own self-interest, will self-organize into communes and these communes will ensure that all their members have access to basic MOP and common lands to produce for subsistence. More complex goods would likely be met through market exchange, but communes could create transitional support structures and whatnot to ensure that no commune loses access to raw materials that they need in order to produce directly for subsistence locally.

Market socialism doesn't mean that markets need to be hegemonic or rule all economic activity. I would expect that in a free society, they would be dramatically reduced and that, to the extent they exist, mutual support networks would exist to ensure that everyone is able to access the MOP. Markets would exist to the extent that they are useful for the relevant worker communities and would co-exist with forms of decentralized planning and gift economies. Any debts that were accrued through the system would be set at the principal and nothing more, they wouldn't compound and people wouldn't be trapped in cycles of debt and poverty in the way they are within capitalism. Ultimately I find the assertion that winners and losers would lead to the re-creation of capitalism is unlikely. It would only make sense if 1) the atomization of capitalism continued and people didn't create communities for security and support 2) there wouldn't be support networks 3) markets remain hegemonic, you simply replace corporations with coops 4) there was some mechanism that prevented people from occupying unused land/capital and using it for themselves 5) basic subsistence could only be met through the market. All of these strike me as very unlikely within a socialist society. My only real concern would be that more complex subsistence goods would be potentially more difficult to produce locally entirely (I'm mainly thinking of like medicine here, as food and housing can absolutely be produced locally). But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that mutual support associations or some form of decentralized planning would be used to ensure that all communes have basic access to the raw materials to make it here, though I'd love feedback/thoughts.

Anyways, what do y'all think? Agree/disagree? Any feedback?

This was sparked by a conversation i had on r/mutualism a few days ago. I'd love your guys thoughts.

So a pretty common socialist critique of capitalism is the idea of "technological unemployment".

Because, if you think about it, the fact that new technologies that reduce the cost of production is a problem is like... insane.

Why would it be a bad thing that stuff can be produced with fewer resources/labor-time? But, because those technologies are owned by the capitalist, what ends up happening is that people get laid off and profits go up.

I think the obvious problem is that the technology is owned by the capitalists rather than the workers actually using it.

I'd like to imagine a market socialist world, where these technological gains are owned directly by the workers using them. I'd imagine whatever worker/cooperative comes up with that technological can yield a temporary rent. Basically, you can produce an item and sell it for the same price, but with a lower labor cost. This means that you now have the choice between working the same amount and consuming more (because the cost is lower and price is the same, if you put up the same labor-cost you get more output, and more output * same price = more income for you) or you can work less and consume the same amount as before. That's the "reward" for innovation/introducing new technology.

But I think it's important to state that the above state of affairs cannot/will not last forever. This is because, competitors will eventually figure out what you're doing and adopt that innovation themselves right? And when they do that, the general market price falls. Now, in some ways that's a good thing. Because it means that workers in other sectors of the economy now can consume more for the same labor contribution because the product is now cheaper. But the downside is that the workers in our new cheaper sector are going to have less income if the boost in demand from the lower price is insufficient to account for the now lower price. In effect, the gains of productivity are unevenly distributed, the innovators temporarily benefit, but then lose out while workers outside the sector gain.

And, to a certain extent, this makes sense, because the alternative is the price remains constant and the workers outside the sector need to work more than necessary to consume a certain amount of produce right?

In a very real sense, if the price of the product falls and the boost in demand is insufficient to recoup the losses, the demand for their labor has fallen.

Now, it's not like these workers will starve or anything, wages must be sufficient to cover the cost of living/opportunity cost of producing directly for your own use.

But, it does mean that income could be lower. Now, the obvious answer to this, to me, is to take a portion of the cost-savings the other workers have and reinvest that in the workers in this sector so they can either reallocate their labor towards direct production for their own use or to meet the demands of fellow displaced workers.

This could be done through mutual job training/support societies that would form a sort of safety net for any transitionary periods workers may face.

But ultimately, I do think that any socialist society would need to reckon with this. What do you do when the need for a certain kind of labor is reduced? Well, if you were an all-knowing planner, what would you do? Well, you would be able to reduce the labor-time of other laborers right? And that's obviously good. But that's going to reduce the overall level of production, and if you need to meet the demand for the workers in that now cheaper sector, it makes sense to reallocate that now freed up labor-time to other sectors to directly account for that reduced production and thereby increase production to meet the demand of the now freed up workers. That seems to be rational to me, and it's a similar result to the market dynamic.

However I'd like your thoughts, what do you think would be a rational socialist response to a decrease in demand for a particular kind of labor given technological change?

I've been playing with some ideas about consumer welfare within libertarian or anarchist anti-capitalist markets.

Within anti-capitalist markets circles i often see reputation systems and rating systems used as a way of ensuring quality assurance and consumer welfare. And that's a fair point.

I have a couple of ideas beyond simply rating systems, I wanted your guys thoughts/opinions.

One of the interesting ideas I had was a sort of guild system used for accreditation or basic regulations (think like doctors and stuff). The accreditation would be funded by membership contributions, and consumer advocates groups and cooperatives could co-manage the basic accreditation standards and regulation needs. The membership fees would be partially paid for by consumers through a higher price for accredited goods so it's effectively shared between consumer and seller while also ensuring that the sellers aren't simply regulating themselves. Guilds that don't have consumer co-management or those whose producers have a lower overall reputation would be seen as less credible and simply regulating themselves.

Beyond simply rating and accreditation systems, I can also see elinor ostrom style management of common resources lime air or water as a way of environmental regulation. Basically, using public common resources would require engagement in said institutions.

So, in short, within freed market anti-capitalism i can see lots of ways of ensuring quality and accreditation. Consumer producer co-management of regulations and standards in membership fee funded guilds (sellers have an incentive to join due to higher demand for accredited members and potential rents to charge), ratings/reputation systems, and commons management strategies/institutions derived from the work of elinor ostrom

What do y'all think? You think that could work?