in most people's minds anarchy summons up visions of a lawless hellscape where only the strongest and most brutal
people can survive. Something like the Purge. In fact, the second Purge movie
literally has the subtitle Anarchy. But I don't want that! It's obvious that in a
world where only the strong survive I'd be burned for fuel on day one! How
could I want something so incongruous with my effete, soft-boi lifestyle? What I
want is socialism, but like, without a state. Also it'd be mad decentralized. We
call this framework anarcho-communism. Hey, real quick, here's the definition of
socialism I use so we can be on the same page. Common ownership of the means of production. Which is to say that the stuff needed, to make the stuff needed to
survive, so like factories tools and farms and that kind of thing, are owned
and controlled by everyone that depends on them rather than privately owned by
whatever ding dong had the money to buy them. Sounds pretty good, right? But if you ask centrists and right-wing goofballs about it, "Oh it works on paper, but it'll
never work in real life!" There's just one little thought terminating cliche that
prevents socialism from ever working in the real world... Attila the Hun, Elizabeth Báthory, Mozart,
Andy Dick, Marie Curie, Camus, Tilda Swinton ,Napoleon, Octomom, Nelson Mandela, Sonic the Hedgehog... All human. All possessing the
same mercurial essence. The unseen, irreducible, inalienable, quality of human
nature... that makes their actions and behaviors exactly the same if you think
about it! Socialism can't work because people are
simultaneously too greedy and too lazy. That may seem like an oxymoron but it
isn't because...(long silence). Well anyway that's a pretty dim view of humanity
if you ask me I happen to think that mutual aid is a factor of evolution! The
assumption wieners make is that socialism is somehow based on everyone
sharing stuff, with no protections in place if somebody tries to take all this
stuff, because it's all based on the honor system I guess. All the stuff is
just put in a big pile and people can come and take whatever they want so one person could take everything and everyone else would be hosed.
But socialism doesn't just mean everybody sharing things! It means that
if everyone in the community needs something, nobody gets to own it
privately, and as a consequence of that people kind of have to share things.
Let's look at a very realistic example I've cooked up with my good good
anarchist brain: Say we have some rich pervert... let's call him "Dave the
capitalist". Because of his inherent rational self-interest, he covets
material wealth. In his village the greatest producer of this wealth is a
big fidget spinner Factory. All the rest of the people in his village need those
fidget spinners to soothe their nervous energy. Under capitalism Dave gets to buy
the factory, assuming he has the capital to do, so then he owns the fidget
spinners and everybody has to pay him to get one.. and since they have no other wayto self-soothe he can charge whatever he wants! That's called "inelastic demand." He can bilk the poor fidgety peasants for
everything they have, and live high off the hog on his fidget throne. Under
socialism, Dave doesn't get to keep the factory if everyone else
needs it. Sucks for Dave right? How's he gonna feed his capitalist family? Oh wait
it's fine, because all of the things necessary for
survival, like farms and shelter, are owned in common. So he has just as much right to food as anyone else, presuming that he shares in the labor of producing
it. But how would the peasants take away the factory? They'd just walk in and take
it because the police and military wouldn't back up Dave's property claims
because property claims wouldn't exist... and ideally neither with the police or
military. Socialism doesn't break down if people refuse to share, because you can't
hoard things from people if nobody respects or, critically, defends with
force your right to privately own things if other people need them to survive.
Human greed isn't a big problem for socialism because the economic system
doesn't incentivize it or protect i,t but it's a big problem for capitalism though! Oops!1% of the global population owns 50% of the total wealth on the planet (sad slide whistle noise). A lot of the jobs people do now would be
completely irrelevant in an an-com society. We wouldn't need anyone to work
in advertising, or finance, we wouldn't need managers, middle managers, presidents, vice presidents, executives, account managers, brand specialists, thought leaders, lobbyists or any of the other parasites that capitalism makes
essential nowadays. A lot of jobs just straight up don't need to be done... At all.
David Graeber writes about what he calls "bullshit Jobs": "In the year 1930
john maynard key- keen... Keynes! predicted that by the century's end
technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great
Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15 hour work week. There's
every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms we are quite capable
of this. And yet it didn't happen. Instead technology has been marshaled, if
anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this
jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of
people in Europe and North America in particular spend their entire working
lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be
performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is
profound. It is a scar across our collective soul."
There's a whole lot of human energy that could be redirected to more
useful purposes... and that's not even touching people who want to work and be
productive but can't find a job or the idle rich who literally do nothing. But
granted, there are a lot of jobs that are difficult and require specialized
training... here's the thing though, I really don't want those jobs being done
by people who are just cashing a cheque. I want my doctor to genuinely care about
my health and be passionate about learning and practicing medicine. There
are probably a lot of very caring intelligent and fastidious people who
can't become doctors under capitalism because they can't afford the training.
And imagine, just imagine, the way specialized fields could be
revolutionized if everyone with the necessary drive and talent was able to
participate in those fields, and those without those qualities didn't feel
compelled to participate in them and junk everything up just to get a
paycheque. Every doctor that's ever pushed pills on you because they had a
sweetheart deal with the manufacturer, every therapist has ever stalled to
bill more hours, every lawyer who defends exxon-valdez when they have an
oil spill, every cab driver who took the long way to your destination, every
salesperson who tried to push a useless extended warranty... They all did it
because the point of their job is to make money, not to help people, not to
service human need. But what about crappy jobs? Well I guarantee for literally
every job, no matter how difficult, dangerous, or disgusting
there are passionate people who genuinely want to do it and plenty of
competent people who would be willing to do it if it needed to get done. And sure,
maybe you say, "Not me I'll just sit around playing video games"... you cannot do the labor necessary to have everything you need to live a life of leisure
playing video games on your own. You can't. Making your own food alone would
be so much effort that you wouldn't have much time left over to research how to
solar power your X-box. At some point, you're going to require
someone else's help and why would people give it to you if you're not willing to
help others when they need it? But if everyone works just a little bit we can
all blow the rest of the time doing anything we want to do! You could spend a lot of time playing video games or you could stay the course in capitalism
generating endless reports that nobody reads to justify the salary that you
need to pay rent to your landlord who literally does nothing but sit on their
butt and collect cheques from you. Your choice I guess. Ultimately I can't prove what human nature is I can't prove people are fundamentally good or
hard-working, but even if we weren't I think it's worth challenging the
assumption that the way people behave now is intractable and unchangeable. I
don't believe there's such thing as human nature, we're flexible animals.
Human beings are really, really good at adapting to new ways of doing things, we
need to get better at the reverse: Adapting the way we do things to be
better for human beings. We're good enough to live in a better
world. We need to fix the mess that capitalism has made of our lives. We can
fix it, and we will fix it because humans have the capacity to be compassionate
and hard-working, and compassion and hard work are all that is required. If you
think humanity is defined by selfishness and cruelty let me ask you this... If
people are so fundamentally crooked that they cannot be trusted with freedom
because they will abuse it, how can they be trusted with authority over someone
else? Charlie! Look at me. Look at me! hey tell people to LIKE and
subscribe tell them tell them to LIKE and
subscribe to thought slime on YouTube.com Charlie, Charlie I don't ask you for
much please man please Charlie I put so much work into this video
HOOMAN NAYTURE!!!111
But if people are greedy and lazy wouldn't they want free stuff and shorter work hours? Capitalists don't make no sense!