40 years ago the last dictatorship ended and an electoral process began,inaugurating the longest democratic period in Argentine history. In thiscontext, Alfonsín's phrase became famous during the campaign, whichstated that with democracy " you eat, you educate and you heal . " Thestatement played at least two sides. On the one hand, it sought todismantle the idea that the country was not viable without militaryintervention; On the other hand, it sought to capture the representationof social democracy and social justice. That slogan, along with theintelligent use of the preamble of the constitution, was one of thepillars of the campaign with which radicalism won the elections.There is no doubt that the democratic opening was an importanttransformation. However, the ideological impact of the dictatorshipshifted the axis of social conflict to the point of masking theradicality of social and political projects, and consolidated thesubordination of the labor movement to the internal conflicts of thebourgeoisie.Since 1983, democratic capitalism has never been questioned. Beyond theearly times in which the power structure of the dictatorship still hadthe capacity to politically destabilize the Alfonsín government, afterthe trials and the progressive dismantling of the political capacity ofthe armed forces, the adventures of the economic model that thedictatorship had imposed was processed within a democracy promoted bythe new geopolitical strategy of the United States, based on thedirectives established in the so-called Washington consensus.In this context, the opening of the capitalist market ended upconsolidating its global dominance in what was called, towards the 90s,globalization. Globalization was nothing other than the opening ofinternational markets so that businesses from central countries wouldnot have difficulties entering the so-called "developing" countries.In Argentina, the doctrines of the Washington consensus were deployedwith such severity that it ended in the destruction of the local economytowards the end of the 90s, and accompanied the decline of politicalrepresentation that, having abandoned the transcendent maxims ofprevious decades, It only managed to ruin the economic life of the localpopulation, and raffle off its own infrastructure to pay the expenses ofthe semi-dollarization of the infamous convertibility.The truth is that in the last 40 years the promise of economic andsocial well-being promoted by a social democratic capitalist democracyfirst, and neoliberal later, failed miserably. Faced with its ownfailure, the monolithic discourse of democratic self-justificationmanaged to ruin its own legitimacy. Today we see how the temptation of abreakdown in the social, political and economic order has the ability tochannel the inevitable frustration of the population in the face of whatis perceived as a failed system. And we also see how serious it is totry to get out of a bad situation in a reactionary way, hugging, in theface of anxiety, anything that seems to float. From an electoral pointof view, what we have before us is a lead lifeline.Democratic propaganda repeatedly resorted to the threat of chaos. Wehave always been told that democracy is not a perfect system, but it isthe least bad of the known systems. Since it was impossible to defendcapitalist democracy for its own virtues, it was always justified withthe threat of the horror of dictatorship or the chaos of anarchy. Thisdogmatic manipulation, which did nothing more than sweep it under therug and kick it for later, ended up legitimizing its antagonists. Todaywe have before us a hybrid construction, the invention of a cocktailmade from the evocation of chaos and dictatorship as a way out of thechronic chaos of liberal democracy. And the counterpart is preciselythat chamuyo: a government opposed to itself that promises to changeeverything they are doing wrong by doing the same.MIlei's electoral performance is an expression of the rise of a sectorof radicalized liberals who call themselves libertarians, libertariansor anarcho-capitalists. This responds to three main questions: 1- thesustained militancy of people committed to those ideas, 2- thefunctionality of those ideas in the face of the structural crisis ofcapitalism and representative democracy, and 3- the atrocities that theydo, have done and continue to do. making the representatives of the people.The image of anarcho-capitalism is built on a series of ideas, some ofwhich are frankly unsustainable, and others not so much. But politicalillusions do not ask for solid arguments but for eloquent images of apromising future, even if it is implausible. If such an illusion is notachieved, at least the illusion that revenge will free us fromfrustration will be achieved.The weight of that frustration should not be underestimated. Politicalrepresentation was shattered at the end of the last century, and todayonly a ruined caricature remains, the sad clown of what once wanted tobe sold as a democratic party. What we are left with is thedisillusionment that is projected onto an empty space of leadership,like a destructive tantrum that does not measure consequences.But that's not the only thing about anarcho-capitalism. There is also ahistory, a certain theoretical thickness and there are strong ideas thatdeserve discussion. Among them I want to highlight three: 1- the ideathat private property is legitimate, 2- the idea that the State isresponsible for all the evils of society and 3- the idea that anarchy isjust a prefix. which is used in opposition to the State. Theseideological foundations of the anarcho-capitalist discourse are whatmake it functional in the face of the contemporary crisis because theyhave the strange virtue of offering a revolutionary radicality capableof channeling frustration and, at the same time, the renewed hope thatthis system finally works. It is not about the catchphrase of " changingeverything so that nothing changes ", but about changing certainstructural things so that the promises of capitalism are finally fulfilled.This is the trap of anarcho-capitalism: it is not in itself a lie, eventhough its speech is full of fallacies, but rather the false illusionthat by killing the jailer we will get out of prison.WHY ANARCHY IS NOT JUST THE DENIAL OF THE STATEAlthough the bourgeoisie, through its political resources and theseizure of power, consolidated its premises in 18th century France andpolitically organized the times to come, it was the mass of workers,mostly peasants, who carried out the actions. revolutionaries that shookthe old regime and established proclamations and debates that were laterdiluted, if not forgotten, by the revolutionary power.One of the proclamations that emerged from that process, or, rather,that promoted that process, was the abolition of land ownership. The oldregime was made up of a system of three orders: the nobility, the clergyand the rest . That " other ", the surplus, was called the third estatein those times. The origin of this structure is related to the feudalproduction system, which basically consisted of the nobility, the soleowner of the land, charging the peasants for the use of it in the formof a part of their product, in exchange, mainly, the provision of security.The peasantry was very clear that this property right was the drivingforce of the social problem, and some peasants began to demand theabolition of property and the pooling of goods, starting with the land.The question of property did not appear solely as a proletarian demand.The nascent bourgeoisie also focused on property, which was already, formany, the nodal point of the issue. So much so that many intellectualsand the entire arc of political thought of the Enlightenment were clearthat the debate about property was the articulator of the new politicaldiscussions. But the bourgeoisie was not interested in the abolition ofproperty but rather the universality of access to it, which is recordedin the declaration of the rights of man and citizen .In any case, property had taken the place of the organizing element ofthe social principle. If property explained the social order, of anykind, the abolition of property implied disorder. This is how the risingbourgeoisie opposes the idea of the abolition of property and rejects itoutright. It will not take long, in that same reaction, to brand thosewho promote it as anarchists , because for them to deny property was todeny social order and promote chaos.That is why Proudhon, a French socialist born in 1809, published a textin 1840 in which he radically discussed property as an organizingelement of society and claimed in that same text as an anarchist.Proudhon never questioned property itself but rather its function in thesocial order of both the old regime and the new. That text, What isProperty , inaugurates the adventure of thought towards a scientificsocialism that can explain, in the code of the newest social sciences,the correct way to order society. In that context, the relationshipbetween the economic order and the political order was absolutelydetermined. For Proudhon they are two sides of the same coin. That iswhy the idea of anarchy as the denial of any central government, thatis, as the denial of the State, appears inextricably linked to the ideaof the denial of property as an institution that regulates the socialorder and legitimizes income.Income, that is, the profit obtained not from work but from theownership of land or capital goods, is what is at the bottom of thediscussion about property because it is what enables the inequality ofeconomic relations, both in that time and in ours. No matter how muchillusion of futurism we are living, that principle, archaic as it is,remains nuclear.The term anarchism as an identifier of a political thought that deniesthe virtues of state centralism and the authoritarian principle,therefore linked to libertarian values, followed its own course. It waslater, in the context of the first international and in its consequentideological lines, that it ended up occupying its current place, as thename of a social and political movement always linked to the abolitionof private property, supporting the idea that the institutions Politicaland economic are two sides of the same coin. Even when the relationshipbetween the two has not been defined in a causal and determined manner,they are, at the very least, two expressions of the principle ofauthority and sources of injustice.It is important to note the error that many historians have made. Withthe intention of explaining that the denial of authority has always beenan idea spontaneously present in human societies, it has been suggestedthat anarchism can be reduced to this anti-authoritarian principle.However, no matter how much anarchism draws from that tributary, it is avery specific configuration of the libertarian principle in the generalcontext of modern thought, born from the relationship of reciprocitybetween economy and politics[1], with its own history and a worthy one. singularity.When a new word appears in the context of thought, it is necessary toconsider that, most likely, that word appears to overcome the need toname something unique enough that no other word can be found that canname it sufficiently. Anarchism is not synonymous with a libertarianprinciple or the denial of all authority: it is the name of a specificsocial and political movement born in the light of the criticisms ofsocialism against property and, therefore, against capitalism and the State.WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO INSIST ON THE ABOLITION OF PROPERTYProperty is an institution of law that regulates the relationshipbetween a person and a thing. Similar to the meaning that the wordproperty has in physics, where a property of an object is something thatcharacterizes and constitutes it, property has become, in a certain way,an attribute of the person.The Royal Spanish Academy defines property poorly, saying that it is"The right or power to possess something and be able to dispose of itwithin legal limits." That would clearly be the right of possession anduse, but not ownership. Ownership is not synonymous with possession, useor disposal. What really characterizes property is the right to prohibitthird parties from possessing or using an asset that is neither ownednor needed.If it were a question of denying another the use of an asset that onepossesses, the right of possession would be sufficient. Why wouldsomeone claim for themselves an asset that is owned by another? Perhapsout of necessity, I will be told. It would be the case in which the needof the second is considered more imperative than the need of the first.In such a case the right of necessity would operate and the propertywould legally pass from one to another. But why deny someone a good thatis neither possessed nor needed? What is the right that enables, forexample, an owner of two homes to evict someone who has settled in oneof them with the sole purpose of meeting her housing needs?Well, this is clear. Property is the right to prohibit another frompossessing or using something that he or she does not need or possess .Then, the owner can suspend that prohibition more or less at his whim,and enable the use of that property on a provisional or temporary basisin exchange for remuneration. This is the way in which property, theinstitution of law, enables income, the institution of the economy.You can say whatever you want, but this is enough to understand propertyand its economic consequences.In the example of housing we are considering the consumption need of aperson with respect to a good (in this case housing). Although theperson does not " consume " the home in the strict sense, because thehome is not exhausted with use as food would, from an economic point ofview it is considered consumption because the action of inhabiting thehome is related to the satisfaction of a need or desire.Another would be the case in which the home was used as a workshop. Inthis case, when housing is used for production it would be incorporatedinto the production process as capital.If we now consider the ownership of capital goods, that is, of allavailable things that serve to produce other things, we quickly see thatincome is obtained as compensation for the circumstantial suspension ofthe prohibition of use by the owner. Thus, the benefit resulting fromthe productive activity will be distributed between those who work andthose who circumstantially suspend the prohibition of using capitalgoods. I insist that this prohibition is not because these goods arebeing used, nor because they are necessary for something more urgent,but simply because the capitalist is linked to them by the propertyrelationship.Capitalism is the name of the economic system that benefits the ownersof capital over workers in the distribution of social wealth.You can say whatever you want, but this is enough to understand capitalism.It is important to consider that income on capital is not obtainedprimarily from the rental of the means of production, but rather fromthe appropriation of the productive process and the product.Furthermore, in a monetary economy, wealth is represented by money.Therefore, when we talk about capitalists we are not only talking aboutthe owners of the machines, but also about those who have the money toactivate the productive process and pay for the labor force necessaryfor production.What capitalists do by appropriating the productive process is to keepfor themselves the benefit of economic activity, that is, what isobtained by the collective and organized provision of production capacity.It will be better understood with the following example: two pioneersobtain land and the materials to build their two homes. They have twooptions: they organize together to build the two homes together or eachone builds their own. It is evident that the most productive thing willbe to combine the effort by organizing together.What we call productivity is the optimization of the cost-benefitrelationship. Working together and well organized, our pioneers willobtain two better finished homes, with less effort and in less time.They will even manage to do things that would have been impossiblealone. And they will also achieve better material performance, becausethey will make better use of the surpluses.The pioneers planned to dedicate one year each to the construction oftheir homes, but by working together they have managed to complete theentire process in a single year. At first glance it seems that they havetaken the same time, but they have taken half as long because theequation is not individual, but collective. To celebrate, they havedecided to use the rest of the materials and an additional month of workto build a town square [2], as a symbol of a new community.Capitalism is the name of the mechanism by which some of themappropriate the place in the name of income.Economic production is necessarily social. For the economy to work,infinite factors are put together that are grouped into three groups:land, capital and labor. But when we say land we mean not only theterrain, but also the raw materials and the natural environment. Andwhen we say capital we also say urban infrastructure, commercialnetworks, financial administration, credit, etc. and when we say work wealso say trades, acquired knowledge, training, creativity, etc.Economic production is the result of contemporary human associativityand throughout history. Creation and invention, the accumulation ofinformation and technical, technological and infrastructure developmentare some of the aspects that highlight the historical dimension of theeconomic fact. And this converges in the impossibility of establishingthe magnitude of a supposed fair remuneration of the factors ofproduction, that is, the fair magnitude of the remuneration of the worknecessary for all of this to exist.Income is the economic institution that results from the common beingappropriated, which is clearly unfair because it enables structuralinequality in economic relations. Property must be abolished becauseincome is unjust, and that injustice is observed not only in thestructural inequality of economic relations, but in the radicalinequality of the distribution of wealth in a world that exponentiallyincreases the concentration of wealth at time in which poverty andsocial exclusion multiply.THE TRAP OF ANARCHO-CAPITALISMWith all of the above it is clear that the proposition of somethingcalled anarcho-capitalism is a contradiction in terms. And it is evenworse: it is a trap that promises the illusion of widespread individualfreedom in a context of economic development that can never exist exceptat the cost of the structural exclusion of the majority of the population.In war movies we almost always identify with the protagonists. We seehow thousands of figures who are not even secondary characters arekilled in combat and we get nervous about the fate of our soldier Ryanor his heroic rescuer. Unfortunately, electoral processes and politicalidentification mechanisms operate with the same spectacular logic.The individualism that promotes competition between citizens for thedevelopment of the economy is fascinating because of its successstories, but it is not so fascinating when we look at the other cases.Behind the fantasies of the liberal spectacle there is a construction ofmeaning that firmly consolidates the individualist project. It is amodel of society in which the common disappears and is replaced by amultiplication of always individual actions. It is the inevitableconsequence of a modern conception of the individual as the ultimatetruth of the human condition.One of the campaign slogans that were repeated in recent months says: "A different Argentina is impossible with the same old ones ." With thattitle, an article signed by Milei was even published in the newspaper LaNación in the month of June.That phrase personalizes the question. The problem is no longer theState, but the same people as always . And this is symptomatic, becauseit is actually the way in which individualism looks at the world. Thereare only individual actions. From the individualist perspective, the common does not exist as such,but as an expression of the interactions between individuals. There isno space of meaning, there is no structural linkage that goes beyond theexchange between two parties. This question, which may seem veryabstract, is fundamental because one of the most determiningconsequences of the anacrocapitalist discourse is the disappearance ofthe common and the destructive impact that this has on social life, thatis, on our daily lives.In this it is necessary to point out that many expressions of anarchism,engaging in a crusade against authoritarianism, have repeated theconceptual error of statism when it identifies the common with the State. And this connection also enables the structural difficulty ofaddressing the common without giving rise to authoritarianism.This interpretation of communism is historical and is justified by theauthoritarian claims of those who have defended communism until the endof the 19th century. But the communists, the socialists who advocatedthe abolition of property and equality of fortunes, were precisely thosewho were branded as anarchists in revolutionary France in 1789.For authoritarian communism, the common is expressed in a centralauthority that administers social life, placing emphasis on the publicand imperatively subordinating individual life to collective life. It isa perspective contrary to any libertarian expression and that thereforeruins the egalitarian in the hands of the equalizing. Proudhon protestedagainst this authoritarian communism, and before it he offered hisformulation of mutualism.Proudhonian mutualism is a construction that seeks to avoid thecentralist authoritarianism of the modern State and, in turn, avoid theinjustices of capitalist individualism. It emphasizes reciprocity, whichit sees as a universal expression of justice. This model fails, amongother things, because it does not address the common except as a sum,despite containing a clear conceptualization of surplus value as aneffect of the organization of work [3].But anarcho-capitalism doesn't even try to get there. What it proposesis to release market forces in the dogmatic idea that assumes that theeconomic behavior of societies has an appearance of naturalness. Theradical liberalism that is called anarcho-capitalism assumes thatletting market forces be released will end up optimizing economicprocesses, finding a balance analogous to that of water when it reachesits surface level.With this we see that the core of the issue, economic inequality, theeffect of the right of property as an ordering regime of social life,complicit in the political centralism of the State in the configurationof modern society, remains completely intact and, what It is worse,enhanced, taken to its extreme and elevated to the order of naturallaws. It is the belief that the prison of capitalism does not exist, butthat confinement is due solely to the intervention of the guard, andthus the illusion is forged that we will free ourselves from thisconfinement by simply killing the jailer.In the case of Milei and the vernacular extremist liberals, fantasy goesup a notch by participating in the electoral process with the intentionof governing. They simply promote the destruction of the State from theState itself, as if it were a parody of the dictatorship of theproletariat, without a proletariat. There are only two options: eitherthey think that the problem, ultimately, is not the State but theadministrators; or they believe they are capable of escaping structuralconditions and achieving what they claim is impossible: finding justicethrough the State.If the problem with the State is that they are the same as always, it isclear that the problem is not the State. But if the problem is caste, itis clear that they want to be part of the problem.Milei speaks of caste in the sense in which the French revolutionariesspoke of nobility using that expression. The idea of caste comes fromIndian society. These are classes (castes) of an immovable structurethat distributes in a perpetual and fixed manner the rights, aspirationsand duties of the different sectors of that society.In a very transcendent text of the French Revolution, written by Sieyès,the author states the following:"First of all, it is not possible to place the nobility caste in any ofthe fundamental components of a nation."And from the word caste he draws a call to the bottom with the followingcomment:«Such is the appropriate term, since it designates a class of peoplewho, without any functions or utility and by the mere fact of theirexistence, enjoy privileges linked to their person. From this point ofview there is only one privileged caste: the nobility. This certainlyconstitutes a separate people, but a false people that, unable to existby itself in the absence of useful organs, attaches itself to a nationin the same way as those plant tumors that live on the sap of the plantson which they parasitize and Finally, they dry out. [4]Put politics where you say nobility and the meaning will be the same. Ido not dare to say that Milei thinks about this when he says what hesays, but I am convinced that the epic meaning that his fight againstcaste acquires is versed in this same harmony, with the accusation ofunproductivity of a perpetual sector of the society that reproducesendogamously and uses the productive effort of the people (what Sieyèscalls nation).This is Milei's revolutionary imposture: dethroning the power of aparasitic caste in the name of those who produce wealth. However,according to Milei, those who produce wealth are not the workers, nor isit society, but only the capitalists, and freedom consists of theinfinite multiplication of property and not its abolition. Behind itscrusade against the State, anarcho-capitalism hides a crusade againstthe common, in the conception of a society based on difference andunsupportive competition between individuals.But this is not all: if the consequences of these discourses areanalyzed, it must be considered that anarcho-capitalism ends uplegitimizing statism because it converges with it in the identificationof the common with the State. If we accepted that this identity is true,those of us who claim the common should accept statist centralism. Andthis is precisely what Peronist propaganda intends.Milei's existence was the only chance that a character like Massa couldhave to become competitive at the electoral level, being minister ofeconomy in one of the country's worst crises (which is no small thing)and in one of the worst governments since 1983 ( which is not littleeither). Perhaps this explains why his birth into public life occurredthrough an economic group closely linked to the minister, the Américacorporation, or why it was Massismo, his hyper-rival arch-enemy, whocompleted his lists of government.The trap of anarcho-capitalism, then, is twofold. On the one hand, itpromises impossible well-being for workers through the illusion ofindividual prosperity. On the other hand, it reaffirms, through extremeindividualism, the false identification of the common with the State.We workers must understand that the necessary abolition of the State isinseparable from the necessary abolition of capitalism and property.Without one, the other is a trap. In other words, as long as there is acapitalist production system, the promise of an eat, educate and healdemocracy will remain, at best, a campaign slogan.[1] I am trying here to describe anarchism and not necessarily expressmy own thoughts on these issues.[2] This square represents the extra that is obtained as a result ofcollectively organizing productive tasks, compared to not havingorganized them and each person doing their own thing. It is, in thatsense, a surplus-product (an additional product) or, to use a verycommon expression, a surplus value: this is the origin of the famoussurplus value.[3] See The political capacity of the working class , Pierre-JosephProudhon, 1865[4] What is the Third Estate? Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, Paris 1789HERNÁN MANCUSO - SROV CAPITAL AFFILIATEhttps://organizacion-obrera.fora.com.ar/2023/11/13/por-que-el-anarcocapitalismo-es-una-trampa/====================================_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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