Markets Not Capitalism now on audio!

posted by Erik

I started reading Markets Not Capitalism some time ago, but put it down to listen to the new FREE audio book:  Markets Not Capitalism - Audiobook
its also on youtube: Markets Not Capitalism - On YouTube
you can also download the pdf for Kindle etc: radgeek Markets-Not-Capitalism

donations to c4ss are recommended, and buying the book from Autonomedia as well, but do as you will

So far its been a great read. There are some classic pieces, like Benjamin Tucker's "State socialism and anarchism..." and some contemporary pieces as well. Overall its a great introduction, or picture, of left libertarian freed market anarchism. Although I like Stephanie Murphy, I had a little trouble adjusting to her narrating style for the audio-book.  However, given the weight of the subject matter I can see the difficulty in infusing some parts with soul. After the first few sentences, not realizing who narrated it, I thought someone had created some fantastic new auto-reader that had lost almost all of its robotic-like traits for a damn good human imitation because the narration was so metered and matter-of-fact, but still lacked human-like rhythms and tone I'd expect-- they came later, though often subtle. Its growing on me, but it was a little awkward at first, as are many audio-books from what I hear from others. It still seems a little sterile or emotionless, but I'm grateful and happy nonetheless. Thank You Stephanie!

The big ideas of Markets Not Capitalism revolve around liberty/autonomy: free association, anti-authority/hierarchy, anti-privilege, the idea that "cost should be the limit of price," or the "right of increase," and that "usury" (interest, rent, and profit) should be abolished.

“Free-market economics” is generally assumed to be the province of “pro-business” politicians and the economic Right. It is usually state liberals, Progressives, Social Democrats and economic radicals who are expected to argue that people in their roles as workers, tenants, or consumers are shoved into alienating relationships and exploitative transactions – that they are systematically deprived of more humane alternatives and suffer because they are left to bargain, at a tremendous disadvantage, with bosses, banks, landlords, and big, faceless corporations. But while I agree that this is a radical – indeed, a socialistic position – I deny that there is anything reactionary, Right wing, or “pro-business” about the ideal of freed markets. Indeed, it is freed market relationships which provide the most incisive, vibrant, and fruitful basis for socialist ideals of economic justice, worker emancipation, and grassroots solidarity. Anticapitalist claims like the ones I have just made may be rarely heard among vulgar “free enterprise” apologists now, but they are hardly unusual in the long view of libertarian history.

Before the mid-20th century, when American libertarians entangled themselves in conservative coalitions against the New Deal and Soviet Communism, “free market” thinkers largely saw themselves as liberals or radicals, not as conservatives. Libertarian writers, from Smith to Bastiat to Spencer, had little interest in tailoring their politics to conservative or “pro-business” measurements. They frequently identified capitalists, and their protectionist policies, as among the most dangerous enemies of free exchange and property rights. The most radical among them were the mutualists and individualist Anarchists, among them Benjamin Tucker, Dyer Lum, Victor Yarros, and Voltairine de Cleyre...(Charles Johnson p.66)

Benjamin Tucker's ideas are indeed radical, yet a brilliant means to end privilege. Here he combines the ideas of Josiah Warren, Pierre J. Proudhon, and Karl Marx:

that the natural wage of labor is its product; that this wage, or product, is the only just source of income (leaving out, of course, gift, inheritance, etc.); that all who derive income from any other source abstract it directly or indirectly from the natural and just wage of labor; that this abstracting process generally takes one of three forms – interest, rent, and profit; that these three constitute the trinity of usury, and are simply different methods of levying tribute for the use of capital; that, capital being simply stored-up labor which has already received its pay in full, its use ought to be gratuitous, on the principle that labor is the only basis of price; that the lender of capital is entitled to its return intact, and nothing more; that the only reason why the banker, the stockholder, the landlord, the manufacturer, and the merchant are able to exact usury from labor lies in the fact that they are backed by legal privilege, or monopoly; and that the only way to secure labor the enjoyment of its entire product, or natural wage, is to strike down monopoly. (p.24)

 Besides the points above, the book focuses on:

The social relationships that market anarchists explicitly defend, and hope to free from all forms of government control...:

1 .  ownership of property, especially decentralized individual ownership, not only of personal possessions but also of land, homes, natural resources, tools, and capital goods;
2 .  contract and voluntary exchange of goods and services, by individuals or groups, on the expectation of mutual benefit;
3 .  free competition among all buyers and sellers – in price, quality, and
all other aspects of exchange – without ex ante restraints or burdensome barriers to entry;
4 .  entrepreneurial discovery, undertaken not only to compete in existing markets but also in order to discover and develop new opportunities for economic or social benefit; and
5 .  spontaneous order, recognized as a significant and positive coordinating force – in which decentralized negotiations, exchanges, and entrepreneurship converge to produce large-scale coordination without, or beyond the capacity of, any deliberate plans or explicit common blueprints for social or economic development. 

[M]arket anarchists sharply distinguish between the defense of the market form and apologetics for actually-existing distributions of wealth and class divisions, since these distributions and divisions hardly emerged as the result of unfettered markets, but rather from the governed, regimented, and privilege-ridden markets that exist today; they see actually-existing distributions of wealth and class divisions as serious and genuine social problems, but not as problems with the market form itself; these are not market problems but  ownership problems and coordination problems.

[M]arket anarchists see economic privilege as partly the result of serious ownership problems – problems with an unnatural, destructive, politically-imposed maldistribution of property titles – produced by the history of political dispossession and expropriation inflicted worldwide by means of war, colonialism, segregation, nationalization and kleptocracy. Markets are not viewed as being maximally free so long as they are darkened by the shadow of mass robbery or the denial of ownership; and they emphasize the importance of reasonable rectification of past injustices – including grassroots, anti-corporate, anti-neoliberal approaches to the “privatization” of state-controlled resources; processes for restitution to identifiable victims of injustice; and revolutionary expropriation of property fraudulently claimed by the state and state-entitled monopolists. (p.3)