An Anarchist FAQ (0717) by The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective & The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective

Author:The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective & The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: affinity groups, An Anarchist FAQ, anarcho-communist, anti-capitalist, anti-civ, anti-voting, autonomy, Benjamin Tucker, bibliography, capitalism, children, Chile, class, crime, crisis, critique, democracy, direct action, ecology, economics, environment, ethics, feminist, France 1968, green, health, Herbert Spencer, history, Iain McKay, individualist, introductory, Leninism, marxism, Max Stirner, media, movement, Nestor Makhno, not-anarchist, organization, oxymoron, Paris Commune, platform, practice, prefigurative politics, primitivist, propaganda of the deed, property, proprietarians, reformism, religion, revolution, Russian Revolution, science, self-determination, sexuality, socialism, social revolution, society, Spain 1936, symbols, syndicalist, technology, terrorism, theory, the State, trade, trade unions, Trotskyism, vanguard, violence, work
Published: 2009-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

F.6.2 What are the social consequences of such a system?

The “anarcho” capitalist imagines that there will be police agencies, “defence associations,” courts, and appeals courts all organised on a free-market basis and available for hire. As David Wieck points out, however, the major problem with such a system would not be the corruption of “private” courts and police forces (although, as suggested above, this could indeed be a problem):

“There is something more serious than the ‘Mafia danger’, and this other problem concerns the role of such ‘defence’ institutions in a given social and economic context.

“[The] context ... is one of a free-market economy with no restraints upon accumulation of property. Now, we had an American experience, roughly from the end of the Civil War to the 1930’s, in what were in effect private courts, private police, indeed private governments. We had the experience of the (private) Pinkerton police which, by its spies, by its agents provocateurs, and by methods that included violence and kidnapping, was one of the most powerful tools of large corporations and an instrument of oppression of working people. We had the experience as well of the police forces established to the same end, within corporations, by numerous companies ... (The automobile companies drew upon additional covert instruments of a private nature, usually termed vigilante, such as the Black Legion). These were, in effect, private armies, and were sometimes described as such. The territories owned by coal companies, which frequently included entire towns and their environs, the stores the miners were obliged by economic coercion to patronise, the houses they lived in, were commonly policed by the private police of the United States Steel Corporation or whatever company owned the properties. The chief practical function of these police was, of course, to prevent labour organisation and preserve a certain balance of ‘bargaining.’ ... These complexes were a law unto themselves, powerful enough to ignore, when they did not purchase, the governments of various jurisdictions of the American federal system. This industrial system was, at the time, often characterised as feudalism.” [Anarchist Justice, pp. 223–224]

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