A Story of Disillusionment

"...2 SIDES OF THE SAME COIN" - Anarchist Street Art in Grand Rapids

Somebody named Chris Wilson changed his political views over the course of reading and life experience. I think his story deserves to be repeated here.

He began as a "rather muddled left-wing sympathizer". Dissuaded from such sympathies by Ayn Rand, then von Mises, Hayek, Nozick, and David Friedman, Wilson spent three years as an anarcho-capitalist during which time he "developed and/or adopted every possible philosophical and economic justification that can be conceived of for its defense". But before graduating with his degree in philosophy, he ceased to regard land ownership as a defensible private property right and adopted "Georgist land-socialist views" within his argument for a capitalist system of production.

Wilson found himself further at odds with the traditional libertarian stance when it came to "their lack of focus upon the injustices perpetrated by corporations". As an anarcho-capitalist, he first held that these injustices could disappear with the elimination of corporate privilege, that inevitable component of republican government. He disdained of "corporate charters, subsidies, intellectual property, regulatory privileges, (and) land grants", as well as the libertarian praise lavished upon the virtuous corporation.

After entering the workforce at a large software company, then at a local Internet Service Provider, Wilson experienced a new reality: "that the motivations and principles (or lack thereof) of the president and major shareholders of the ISP are no different from that of any major corporation"; "those who run the company still think of the employees as a cost to be minimized"; "The questions 'Is it right?' or 'Is it just?' do not even enter the minds of the decision makers of capitalist businesses"; and, finally, that even if businesses "don't actually receive favors from the state, then it is typically their aim to receive them."

Wilson took a second look at his vision of an anarchist society, forcing himself to analyze the fundamental "disagreement that separates Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Malatesta from Rand, von Mises, and Friedman." The answer, he discovered, lies in the concept of wage contract, the lawful agreement of an employee to submit to the authority of an employer in exchange for a wage. Anarcho-capitalists see this voluntary labor contract as a healthy element of free industrial society, while Anarchists protest that powerful employers too often use the wage contract to exploit the need of the powerless.

[Wilson's misgivings about property rights also tie in: one anarchist view is that the labor exploitation existing in modern capitalist society results from a massive power imbalance sustained by state-protected property rights -- in an anarchist society, the 'employer' could not have such crazy bargaining power. The existence of the mighty capitalist is an intrinsically unjust outgrowth of the intrinsically unjust, state-perpetuated notions of property rights and authority.]

Wilson "subjected" himself to a thought experiment to sort out his views on labor exploitation:

Jones is a individual who has zero access to capital, which excludes him from being self-employed. He must must find somebody who will share access to capital if he is to continue to eat. Fortunately, Smith has plenty of capital, and is willing to share it -- under certain conditions of course. Smith says to Jones that he can use Smith's capital to produce, *provided* that Jones engages in 90% of the productivity while Smith engages in 10%. Also, Jones will only receive 10% of the revenues despite all of his hard work, while Smith gets to keep 90% for his hoggish self. Jones agrees to these conditions because he has no other option. Is Jones morally bound by his agreement to allow Smith to keep 8 in 9 parts of what what Jones produces?

He admits that his anarcho-capitalist self would have responded 'Yes' just a short time ago, but that his new answer feels right: "My current answer is "No" -- this relationship between Smith and Jones is inherently exploitative, and Jones is entitled to much better."As a fresh social-anarchist, he maintains that a free society would not enforce wage contracts, but neither would it enforce a ban on them.

The conclusion of Wilson's conversion story is solemn. He admits that even within the social anarchist ideology, there are issues of confusion and debate. For example, on the issue of technology, he falls somewhere between the primitivists "who eschew all forms of complex technology" and those who feel that technology can have its role in responsible communities:

I have no desire to return to a hunter/gatherer society, but would also prefer not to rely upon technology that requires a division of labor so extreme that productivity becomes an alienated and meaningless activity. Working within the computer industry, I also understand that when technological complexity transcends our ability to understand it, this is an instance of the machine being in control of us and not vice-versa.

But even more dramatic is the link at the foot of the page, which reads,"[The author has since modified his views, although he still rejects free-market libertarianism.]". Following this link is a continuation of this story of disillusionment. The tone is colder, first-person narration is replaced with a third-person run-through of history and statistics, but this essay is a masterpiece. How did Chris Wilson modify his views? The title and web address speak for themselves. His essay "Against Mass Society" can be found on the Politics page of www.primitivism.com.