Blogroll: Bandera Negra [and notes on anarcho-syndicalism]
If you speak Spanish and have an interest in anarcho-syndicalism, you might want to check out Bandera Negra, Amor y Resistencia [Black Flag, Love and Resistance]
Although not an anarcho-syndicalist myself, the market anarchism I espouse would inevitably result in a world with some anarcho-syndicalist aspects.
Some anarcho-syndicalists envisage their goal as a sort of universal democratic confederation and I’ve never quite understood exactly how that’s not supposed to be a government. If we set that aside, though, we’re left with the general idea of a business world dominated by employee-owned companies that have little or no hierarchy. That seems like a somewhat likely result of competition in a truly free market, in my opinion.
Furthermore, if we concede that governments are all bandit gangs and that therefore government property can not actually be “owned” by either the government itself or anyone the state chooses to award it to for its own convenience, then we are faced with the question of who becomes the rightful owner of all of the formerly state-owned enterprises in the world (the hypothetical day after everybody wakes up and decides we don’t need a government).
Based on Rothbards Lockean criteria of occupancy/use as the origin of legitimate property title, the logical answer to that question is: the former rank-and-file employees of those state enterprises.
It may sound odd for an anarcho-capitalist like me to call for the workers to control the means of production (in at least a few cases) — but hey, there’s no sense in blowing up perfectly good post offices. As long as the letter carriers play nice and allow others to compete in the same market from that point forward, they’re walking the path of Liberty.
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