meta

I hope to write a little more frequently now.  Like others, I’ve faced the question of what exactly the purpose of this blog should be.  As I’m in no position to offer anything like a current events blog, I will instead occasionally write pieces meant to look at a single topic.  For some, like this previous one, the real target audience is primarily, ultimately, the anarchy-curious and random passersby.  Not all of them, though.  That’s why the tone may differ.  And I may bring up different things altogether.  Or maybe nothing at all.

Can a “democratic state” exist?

No — not in any meaningful way.  Nor can “limited government”, “representative government”, or “equal justice under the law”, so long as a state exists.

Possibly the most common, or at least 2nd-most common, argument raised against the political component of anarchist, anti-authoritarian ideas is that “we’re already living in a democracy!  ‘Ruling class’, ‘Hierarchy’ — what are you, some kind of conspiracy theorist?”  Bonus points for making some inane comment to the effect of Bush’s authoritarianism was an attempt to impose “anarchy” on the constitution, the middle ages were an example of “anarchy” until “government” came along, or some such garbage.  I find it strange that very often the same person will make this argument and some variation of the “without rulers we’d be tearing each other to pieces” canard — even though these two arguments, even ignoring how horrible they may be on their own, are simply logically incompatible.  Either we do have authoritarian structures and they need to be defended, or we don’t and then anarchism shouldn’t be anything to flip out over.  If you’re against anarchism, you have to choose which of these approaches you’re going to use.  You can’t have both.

Anyway, there is a very simple flaw with this “we’re already governing ourselves through democracy” line.  Of course, reading the news or even just living ought to suggest this is untrue — at any rate, if the goalposts had to be shifted far enough as to make it an accurate statement, any historical distinction between authoritarianism and non-authoritarianism would be lost.  But let’s try to understand why, exactly, a democratic state is by definition impossible.

What is a state?  A sovereign state is a group of people with a “legitimate” monopoly on the use of force, in a given area.  No state can be fully sovereign (with the ability to stamp out all resistance to it internally, and immune to attacks from abroad; this would require omnipotence), but this is essentially the definition of a sovereign state.  Well, that doesn’t sound very good, a bit like the divine right of kings or something.  Is that really acceptable in today’s world?

Oh, right — in today’s “democratic” societies, the “people” are sovereign.  Obviously the state does not constitute the whole people, so how can this be?  Oh — the state “represents” the people.  Hmmm.   Why?  Are the people forcing it to represent them?  Of course not — the state has a monopoly on violence, and so nobody outside of it is allowed to “force” it to do anything.  So it’s representing them because…uh…it feels like it?  This leads us to a problem, for then we are justified in performing a little thought experiment.  What would happen if the state decided it didn’t want to represent the people? Well, that would be illegal, wouldn’t it?  Oops, well…then we’d vote in a new one, replies the well-trained parrot.  What if the state cancelled the elections, or if there were a coup?  That is, after all, a perfectly plausible concern; it happens all the time in “democracies” around the world, with Thailand and Honduras being two semi-recent examples.  How can it be illegal if the state makes and enforces the laws?  Or, a bit more close to home, what if *cough* someone campaigned to bring change after a decade of tyranny, and then once they got to power, continued what their predecessor was doing?  If voting is all we can do, what prevents that from happening indefinitely?

Voting, simply putting a piece of paper in a box, doesn’t really do anything by itself — not to mention that it won’t help much if the state decides to forbid it.  It certainly does not “force” the state to do anything.  It’s not like the people are allowed to arrest the state if it, say, cancels elections.  (Just look at how Shinawatra’s supporters were treated by their new government.)  So how is it that “the people” are governing themselves?  Well, we’ve gotten to the heart of the contradiction of a “democratic state”.  Because a state is a group of people with a monopoly on violence, there is, by definition, no way that anyone outside of the state can force it to do anything while simultaneously respecting its sovereignty.

“The state is not a monolithic entity; there are checks and balances, and different, opposing groups of people within it!” screams the apologist.  Yes, indeed the notion that the state is bound by its own laws rests on the assumption that another sector of the state will take action against the miscreant sector — for all creation and enforcement of laws takes place within the state.  Okay, so what if that doesn’t happen?  Anyway, how is hoping for checks and balances to kick in fundamentally any different from hoping, say, that a medieval emperor will restrain a tyrannical governor?  More importantly, how do we know our state will be the kind that is regulated by checks and balances anyway?  Not all states are.  Should we just count our lucky stars for being born in one, or would we actually have to force it to be one if it wasn’t?  You see, it’s sort of an infinite regression, unless it is recognized that at some point, the uncomfortable (in mainstream political discourse) scenario of the population directly disobeying, punishing, and attacking the state must come up.  And no matter how you slice it, no matter how well the checks and balances within the state may be working, the central point being made should now be clear: the state is a group of people ruling another group; it cannot constitute the population governing itself (unless it consists of said population, a bizarre scenario if ever there was one).  That’s the issue at hand, not whether or not checks and balances are effective (which they are not).  The existence of any limitations on government within the government itself (and that is the only place such limitations could legally spring from) does not prove that the government is the means by which the population at large governs itself; it does not tell us anything about the government’s relationship with the population at large.  (Though we might ask, why do such checks and balances exist in the first place?  Well, the members of the state might just be nice people, or maybe they are in fact afraid of what the populace would do if they didn’t regulate themselves to an extent — see below.)

So yes, to force a state to do something — whether it be to represent one’s interests, to limit its own powers, or to judge one fairly — must be at the least to threaten to use violence against it, and thus by definition to compromise its monopoly of power, that is to say its sovereignty.  If in theory there is no threat of a non-state actor exercising violence against the state — and by “violence” I really mean refusing to obey it, which is from the state’s point of view a form of violence against it because then its enforcers would be dealt with by the population in the same way an ordinary psychopath trying to imitate the police or military would — then the state is entirely sovereign and thus there are no limitations on its power, and no requirements for it to “represent” its subjects.

Well, almost.  Throughout all of human history, wherever a state has existed, there have been essentially three factors that prevented the state from doing absolutely whatever it wants to whomever it wants (and as certain 20th century states show, absolutely nothing is off-limits):

1. Logistics.  Hoping they just won’t have the resources, or there’ll be some conflict within the state that prevents it from carrying out some decision, or something.  Good luck with that.

2. The wisdom/benevolence of the state.  Um, well, good luck with that.  Let’s party like it’s 1699!

3. As has just been established — Fear that the subjects will break the state’s monopoly of power, refusing to obey it and even perhaps punishing it.  To put it another way, fear of anarchy.

This third one is really the main factor that has put any limits whatsoever on any government throughout the entirety of human history.  It is the only way to limit any government that is compatible with basic modern, humanist principles.  While invoking it will typically get one branded as a “right-wing gun nut” or maybe “pinko anarchist” in this day and age, it is the only thing that really limits any government, or can allow any semblance of “democracy”, at all.  (Checks and balances is a combination of reasons 1, 2 and especially 3.)  And…it is fundamentally an attack on state sovereignty.  If you truly respect the legitimate sovereign power of the state that rules you, you only have options 1 and 2 to protect you.  That’s it.  Period, end of story.

Now, it will be noted that no state has ever been fully sovereign — fully omnipotent, though some have come pretty close.  Thus, it is certainly not impossible to successfully push for reform in a state-run society.  Think of the various “approved” methods to push for reform and “get involved in one’s democracy” — pressure groups, raising popular awareness of issues, protests, letter-writing.  All of these, to the extent that they have been successful (and it would be strange to claim that no progress has ever been made just because the state has not been abolished), ended up sending the ruling orders of society the message that that certain rules (slavery, segregation, etc. ) were not going to be tolerated.  Those on top chose not to find out what would happen if they refused to change with the times, although French and Russian history might have provided a guide.

This may well be the most important insight of all political philosophy.  The specter of anarchy has guided all social progress in the direction of legal equality, justice, freedom, and even — shall we say — “the rule of law”. This is the case in politics, the economy, and any realm of society generally, though here the focus is on politics.  This statement is redundant if one already considers “anarchy” to be the fullest expression of these values, as well as if one explicitly holds these values to be negative, as did conservatives not so long ago.  It is only an illuminating statement if one claims to support these values but still associates “anarchy” with Heath Ledger in makeup — most of American society, for instance.

The American Revolution was this principle in practice; it was far from the final say on the human struggle against domination and hierarchy but was as good an illustration of such as anything seen before or since.  As to be expected, the political message of the revolution was destroyed and dumbed down by the constitution and by generations of “civics” classes: “checks and balances” and the Bill of Rights will automatically take care of the problem of abuse of power (redundant, yes) by itself; don’t ever suggest the people should fight back against their government unless you’re Timothy McVeigh.  And then you act surprised at what your government has become…

Thus this political theory is very much confirmed by historical evidence.  Any form of sovereignty other than the popular sovereignty that comes from universal individual sovereignty must equal tyranny of some over others; liberty and the state are incompatible.

Of course reform can happen under a state, even if the reformers are not aware that they are in fact challenging and compromising the state’s authority.  But there is only so far it can go.  There probably isn’t some mathematical way to figure out exactly how much reform (in the direction of anarchism, obviously) could take place under a state before its governing structure starts to break down completely.  Thus the preceding argument is not a self-contained proof that the state must be abolished, but merely an observation about what seems to be a common oversight people make.  If we want to be able to participate in shaping the institutions that affect us; if we want all people to be equally accountable to others; if we don’t want people knocking on our doors at midnight, sending us into wars, robbing us — well, we need to consider how best that can be done, and whether recognizing a state as holding legitimate authority is, all in all, an implement or a burden in the path to achieving such a society.

Why am I anarchist?

db0 wants to know how I became an anarchist.

Sure, though some of it’s too personal, but I’ll touch on the basics.

My childhood was basically one in which the idea of strong authority never occurred to me as being necessary.  Long story short, by the late ’90s I had picked up on the notion that pretty much everything we were being told by those in power was a lie.  Maybe the ridiculousness of the Monica Lewinsky affair had something to do with it.  The Seattle WTO summit also triggered a tangible wave of anger at the new world order, especially in my hometown, Santa Cruz, California.  I had a very hippie-ish 6th grade teacher who reinforced this sentiment.

My anti-establishment attitude didn’t really materialize into politics until after 9/11, when for a few weeks I took a fairly “mainstream” response — supporting the war in Afghanistan — but then began to turn radically against it as I wondered why everyone was being so servile to the flag and shit, and against the US government in general as I learned about the evils it had committed, and for about two years (age 13-14, if you must know) I was sort of a generic leftist, though I didn’t really know any economics.  Just extremely anti-war, anti-government, anti-status quo generally.  Also, having had Christian beliefs for a few years, I abandoned them at this time, since there were too many unanswered questions, and I was realizing religion was a cover for atrocities and ignorance.

When I was 14, I read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.  I had first heard of Atlas Shrugged from a South Park episode in which it had been brutally mocked, and so I wanted to see if it was really as bad as the rumors had it (I guess I felt like I had to read The Fountainhead first — I don’t remember specifically) — also, there was an objectivist in my class.  Turned out, it really was that bad, and I decided at the end that I disliked it intensely.  However, as the year went on, I was starting to chafe at the contradictions in comfortably accepting, as I said, “generic leftism”.  When I found out that many people in my class, who I didn’t like, had the same sorts of views, I guess a contrarian urge struck again.  I started to re-examine my views, give Rand another chance, and when I was 15 my views began to move toward a Randian idiom.

For the next few years my views stayed about the same.  My support for Rand waned (mostly on account of aesthetics) but my views were essentially hardline Libertarian, with a very right-leaning flavor, much like the writers at Capitalism.org, Thomas Sowell, and other monsters.  However, I remained atheist, so issues like stem-cell research and intelligent design I could not swallow the right-wing views on.  When I turned 18 and went to college in Los Angeles things began to change.  My views had been contrarian within the context of Santa Cruz, but not so much in America as a whole, as I soon found.  The first people I had ever found who “shared” my views were total assholes!  Somehow I had to incorporate the reality that American society is messed up and it’s just as much the conservatives’ fault as the liberals’ into my inner narrative.  My views became more radical, based on an almost leftist, anti-power emphasis on wanting to repeat the American revolution.  Also, I wanted to do some reading to beef up my “free-market” views.  I had heard of these guys called Mises and Rothbard…

So a convergence of events in summer 2007 — that, discovering LewRockwell.com, and hearing about the Ron Paul campaign — turned me to that ideology.  It was basically my official turn to “the left” — still hardcore anarcho-capitalist on economic issues, but finally leftist on everything else, and I considered myself of the left at this point.  By September 2007 I was calling myself an “anarchist” for the first time.  Before then, I assumed that one would only call themself that as a joke, and my objection to anarchism at the time had been that if there isn’t a single institution recognized as having a monopoly on violence, then any group could engage in violence.  But yeah, I was reading Lew Rockwell, Walter Block, Rothbard, etc. like crazy, and that was where I was at, though I still supported Ron Paul, since he was raising the issues publicly, which was very thrilling.

Well, reading Rothbard caused me to see that some “libertarian” views are in line with radical leftism — anti-IP, anti-ownership over vacant land, etc.  I believed that a transition to “libertarian anarchism” — what I called my views — would immediately cause the corporations to splinter and there would be so many options for people that capitalism wouldn’t be a form of oppression, even while I accepted Rothbard’s views on property.  I was, thus, beginning to see that the problems of capitalism couldn’t be handwaved.  (Having a job now may have had something to do with that.)  So in early 2008, after the Paul campaign trailed off into nothingness, I was basically seeking ways to make my views more and more radical, since I wanted commonality with existing critiques of the social order — I wanted to be “on the same page” with people like Noam Chomsky, as I felt there must be some truth to what they were saying.  After having read LRC every day for almost a year, I started to discover some “alliance of the libertarian left” and was intrigued as to what that was all about.  I accepted agorism as I learned about it.  Reading a few blogs such as Rad Geek, Kevin Carson, Human Iterations, etc. made me reconsider some of my views.  Particularly, reading Carson’s historical critiques of capitalism from a libertarian perspective made me decide I was profoundly anti-capitalist. The idiotic critiques of SMPE did not improve the standing of the Misoids in my eyes.

In summer 2008, I was trying to find out more about anarchism — I was still scared away by the “collectivist” social variants, as my views were something of a Rothbardian-mutualist hybrid.  Well, then I read some Proudhon, Bakunin, and the Anarchist FAQ, and realized I actually agreed with this.  (Literally a day or two after I turned 20 — so fuck anyone who says “anarchy is for teenagers!!1!”)  The AFAQ’s vision of a free society, I am not afraid to admit, brought literal tears to my eyes, especially in comparison to the sterile, retrograde nightmare that people like Block seem to delight in insisting would be the result of their ideology.  I read Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread and Berkman’s ABC of Anarchism, with much the same response, though I didn’t quite agree with communism — but as long as it could maintain that self-employment was always an option, then it wouldn’t matter.  So at that point I decided I was a mutualist, but really an anarchist without adjectives — with one foot in each of the market anarchist and social anarchist camps.

As 2008 went on, I became increasingly sympathetic to social anarchism and hostile to anarcho-capitalism, partially as the result of seeing how hostile people on the Mises institute were to Roderick Long’s suggestion that Wal-Mart got some help from the state.  By the beginning of 2009, I had just about dumped ancapism, and was obsessed with thinking about how to justify the “occupation and use” theory of property.

As they say, “and now you know the rest of the story”.  Throughout 2009, I’ve become much more firmly social anarchist.  I think it was this summer that I became more critical of the idea of a market economy as such (unless defined so broadly that it practically loses meaning), and so I don’t really consider myself a mutualist.  I think that replacing corporations with competing cooperatives leaves intact too many of capitalism’s psychoses, and that, given a chance, most people would rather cooperate — when I was working at Taco Bell, the last thing on my mind was wanting to put the people at Rubio’s upstairs out of business.  Is it altruism, or just common sense?  I might write a post about that later.  As of this summer, I personally lean toward a situationist-influenced egoist communism (based on the idea that, if all people set the value of their own labor to infinity–anything less is a sign of submission–communism will be the result), with anarcho-collectivism or mutualism as a safety net in case that doesn’t work (or if, say, someone doesn’t feel comfortable with the people in their vicinity and would prefer interactions to be purely formal, i.e. monetary).  More generally, though, I’m pretty much fine with anything from SE Konkin to Kropotkin, and am still an anarchist-without-adjectives, or anarcho-anarchist, mostly agreeing with Karl Hess’ “Anarchism Without Hyphens” (provided the goal of ending power relations isn’t lost sight of).  Moreover, I’m far from the kind of guy who would “forbid” something I don’t consider “fine” — like Rothbardianism, Parecon, or primitivism.  I have no problem with markets if they are defined as “the sum total of all voluntary transactions”, and tend to default on individualist anarchism, especially when I’m critiquing capitalism.  But I am still easily peeved by the great majority of ancaps, having received a fair deal of pretty nasty trolling, and seeing the same happen to people I respect.

So yeah, a fairly typical story.  Though some of it is left out, the key points are there.  Anyway, I’ve always had a tendency to think about politics and mull over seeming contradictions in my mind, and I don’t stop until I’ve somehow come to a satisfying conclusion.  Far from an idealistic fantasy, I see anarchism as the most consistent, logical, and practical form of social organization, and the only “ideology” (itself a loaded word) that isn’t based on choking down shit and convincing yourself it’s something else — on embracing what you know to be wrong just in order to stick it to the other “tribe”.  And so, here I am.

UC vs. the people

So yesterday the UC Regents met to raise tuition by about 30%, starting next quarter.  This is the biggest fee hike in its history and naturally, people aren’t so happy about this.  There had been a radical-organized “crisis fest” scheduled for that evening, which indeed took place, and protest signs had started popping up around the UCLA campus a few weeks in advance.  Nonetheless, the regents were pretty much completely unapologetic, not really bothering to try to throw us any bones — the Man just responding to the hundreds of protesters demonstrating outside the old-fashioned way, with the violence of the police.

Yesterday, there was an apocalyptic feeling in the air all over the UCLA campus.  I was awakened with the buzz of helicopters, which went on all day, stalking us from above, presumably to keep us safe from the evil protesters remind us who’s in charge, and boy, let me tell you, there is something deeply unsettling about having to hear that all day.  Seemingly spontaneous crowds of students kept forming, here and there, and the regents meeting was all that was on everybody’s lips.  Cop cars, cops, and a lot of Agent Smiths from the Matrix (Halloween was three weeks ago, you guys) are everywhere on campus as well.

The crisis fest, which took place later that evening, was a much smaller deal, with some tents out, and some musical/rap numbers about “illegal” immigration was what I saw.  Much more important have been simply the student protests themselves.  This morning a vast contingent of students marched down to Covel Commons (where the regents meeting was held) chanting “Whose university?  Our university!”  The helicopters and cops still out in full force.  There’s just this indescribable feeling in the air, like we’re in the middle of a revolution.  Where you can hear shouting crowds in any direction.  As I write this (a little after noon on Thursday the 19th) the area around Covel is in a festival-like mode, with protests, people standing around and talking, the cops surrounding the area behind a gate, people driving in from all over to take part, union members with signs, booths with state-socialist and Maoist (sigh…) agitprop, news reporters and vans, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.  Tons of said agitprop lying on the ground all over campus, mostly attacking Obama.  Yesterday there were signs like “Resistance 101: skip class” draped over the fences the authorities had created. Most people’s signs are pretty “moderate”, as in “Education is a right” or “We Demand Real Leadership [with a picture of the chancellor]“.  A few posters and signs are a wee bit more radical, as in “Raise Hell not Fees”, “Tuition Abolition” with an upside-down(??!!) anarchist sign for the “A”; etc.  I put out some makeshift copies of “Communique from an Absent Future”, but to my dismay found later on that three of them had been untouched, the other three were in the garbage can right next to the newspaper bin where I had put them — wtf??!!  I retrieved them all, and will have to come up with another occasion to use them, as I get the feeling the anger that is being stirred up and felt right now all over campus isn’t going to go away any time soon.

I can’t say much more because I don’t know more, and I expect that far more detailed and informative accounts will come of this soon.  I will, however, attempt to make a few remarks about how this is coming off from my perspective.  As is so often the case, the structure of what’s going on matters a lot more than the content.  Of course, the demand at hand — not raising the fees — is one I wholeheartedly agree with for fairly obvious reasons, though I’m not so interested in lobbying the state, the regents, or any other parasites to mercifully bring that about, so much as I would like to see them freeze the fees out of fear of popular retaliation.  Within the context of our existing society, the demand for free or affordable education is not at all an unreasonable one (since we didn’t choose to have a society in which official edukation basically determines your life options in the first place), and one that I don’t think is incompatible with building alternatives to said “society” and gradually getting it off your back (any more than it would be hypocritical to demand that your kidnapper who has you trapped in his basement give you better/more food, while simultaneously planning how you’re going to break free).

Anyway, the take-home point here is (from the point of view of an observer) the utter lack of attempt on the part of the regents, or the system generally, to try to meaningfully justify what they’re doing, or throw any carrots to the aggrieved.  As a result, there is a visceral mood of anger in the air, like things could escalate at any time.  The campus has been pretty apathetic and mainstream the last three years, so this is an exciting change.  Responding to popular anger with a vulgar display of power usually isn’t a very good idea.  From the point of view of a neutral observer, when you have students and workers nonviolently facing down the cops and Smiths with signs and posters, it’s very clear who the good guys and the bad guys are here.  Especially with the fucking helicopters, which are probably driving other people as insane as they are driving me, and with the militaristic vibe they bring, are basically the university’s way of saying, “We don’t give a fuck about you.”  They’ve made themselves clear: peacefully beg to make education affordable enough that you can continue to attend, and we’ll beat your ass down with helicopters, cops and the FBI (?).  What this means is that a large percentage of the student body population is never going to be able to take seriously again the choreographed, condescending spectacles of unity/loyalty arranged for us from on high, whether it’s the “beat SC” rallies; the constant invocation of our bear mascot (as if this were some kind of theme park); the smarmy rhetoric that officialdom uses daily, especially now to try to control, contain, and calm us and sternly warn us not to make too much of a stink; everything.  The naked class nature and authoritarianism of the university has been exposed, and images of today and yesterday will probably remain in people’s heads for a long time.

With the hitherto invisible underlying framework of raw force and intimidation suddenly brought into the limelight — and I am reminded of the scene in The Matrix when Neo first wakes up in his pod and sees where he’s been his whole life — I don’t think we’ll be able to go back to sleep quite so easily.  Sure, there may be rather little of political radicalism as such involved in this, and still less of anarchism, but at the moment that’s not the point.  This may not radicalize people in and of itself, but it has, I think, introduced a permanent wedge between the people and their rulers.  And that in itself is the reason that this protest is such a good thing, even more than the message per se (and whether or not the message is heeded, which it looks like it won’t be).

Reality is breaking the fourth wall. Finally.  It’s like we’re actual people all of a sudden, not law-school fodder.  Everything seems so…different.  That’s what really matters — the realization that things could be different.  That’s where it all begins.

I think that what we’re seeing here is a little sampler of the coming decade.  It’s beginning to look like the Greek insurrection last year may have kicked off a new era — the beginning of the end for…something, who knows what?  It’s up to people like you and me to decide what that leads to.

[update: ok, so maybe some of the helicopters were "just" news helicopters.  Still doesn't change a damn thing.]

[second update: no they weren't. so there.]

Government isn’t illegitimate: it’s imaginary.

I’m back! (crickets)

I want to make mention of what I see as a dead end that arises again and again in arguments between anarchists and statists.  To be more specific, to prove with some neat logical trick that government is illegitimate is interesting, but hardly likely to be convincing to someone unless they’ve already been sold, and misses the point if taken out of any context.

There are many ways that one could go about showing that, logically, a government cannot hold legitimate authority.  If its authority derives from the consent of (a majority of) the governed, then either they have transferred rights (the right to punish criminals, etc.) they did not already have (and how could one do that?) or they had rights to do these things before they consented to be governed, in which case by what right can they take away those rights from others?

Moreover, we are taught that government is legit because of the consent of the majority of the governed, which, because governments generally get to artificially create boundaries of who lives under them, begs the question, the majority where?  By this logic, any band of two people could draft a third person into their “government” and enslave them.  Moreover, a group of people would be able to voluntarily secede from their gubbamint, without the principle of majority consent being violated, yet we are told this is evil, since it would lead to “anarchy” (oh noes!).

In reality, the “legitimacy” of governments comes from faith, tradition, and authority, not from consent of the governed or practical necessity.  But here’s the rub — until the majority of people can reject those things and free their minds, pointing this out will be useless, because this “legitimacy” nonetheless exists.  What we need to recognize is not so much that government is illegitimate — this can lead to charges of elitism, as in “so you get to decide for us what is legitimate??” — but rather that government is imaginary.

Stating that governments should not be met with any more reverence, or subjected to different standards, than the people who compose them is not a political proposition, but is simply grounded in the fact that (if you’ll pardon the reference) A=A.  As we have no physical evidence that there are these things called “governments” that give certain people magic powers, we can assume that they do not exist, and the burden of proof is on those who would say otherwise to justify their claims.

When we see that government is imaginary, then it quickly becomes clear that government is not the problem — it doesn’t exist!  Authoritarianism is the problem.  Obedience is the problem.  These are all psychological problems, and the only way that society is going to change is for people to free themselves.

Thus, the argument that “we are not governing ourselves, whereas X would constitute us governing ourselves” is a dead end.  Similar to this is the tempting but still partially mistaken notion that a transition to anarchy would simply involve the bulk of society casting off a parasitic ruling class and then going back to normal.  Obviously there is a ruling class and it will have to be overthrown, but this isn’t nearly the whole story, nor is it the best way to frame the issues, which comes back to my main point — aside from being accused of conspiracy theories, one who portrays anarchism as simply the desire for self-government free from the ruling classes will likely be met with “…But we’re a democracy!” and this argument is not entirely incorrect.

In a sense, self-government has always existed.  No institutional hierarchy has been able to survive without the appropriate mixture of lies, fear, and violence to keep it in power – but the first two provide the semblance of “consent”.

One could inquire whether, say, the monarchy of ancient Egypt was held in place primarily due to

1)    the honest belief, among most people, that it had divine, legitimate power;

2)    willing obedience due to fear and the lack of alternatives;

3)    obedience due solely to violence, by a population that despises the regime and would rip it to pieces given the chance,

but the real question is, who cares?  What difference does it make?  The 3^rd case is the storybook example of tyranny, un-self-government, but the 1^st and even the 2^nd could be construed as self-government.  You know, because that’s how they do things over there, and who are we to question them?

So the sad truth is that the imaginary entity known as “the American people” is governing itself, by choosing to submit to its masters.  If democracy merely means this, then we do live in one – as have all people in history, with arguable exceptions such as countries right on the verge of revolution.

Thus moving toward anarchy will not be achieved by popping off politicians, but by a majority of people giving up their craving for power, control and obedience.  Arguing whether a government is legitimate, then, is ultimately meaningless, because legitimacy doesn’t have to be based on logic — only on the submissive “consent” of those under it.  In other words, government is “legitimate” because it has power, because it kills and controls people and is allowed to get away with it.  When people refuse to recognize its authority, it will be revealed as the phantom that it was all along.  Meanwhile, I think that it is important to always emphasize what anarchism means on a personal, psychological level, as well as what sorts of economic, political and social structures we should move towards having.   The rest should fall into place on its own.

More baloney…

“Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life.”

–Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“He seized her shoulders, and she felt prepared to accept that he would now kill her or beat her into unconsciousness…

He did it as an act of scorn.  Not as love, but as defilement…

‘I’ve been raped…I’ve been raped by some redheaded hoodlum from a stone quarry…’  Through the fierce sense of humiliation, the words gave her the same kind of pleasure she had felt in his arms.”

–Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Hmmm…interesting.  Food for thought, don’t you think?  Anyway…

Recently a quote has been unearthed by our favorite anarcho-capitalist contrarian Walter Block.  The meat of it goes something like this:

“…the fact is that the pinching that takes place between a secretary and her boss, while objectionable to many women, is not a coercive action. It is not a coercive action like the pinching that takes place in the public sphere because it is part of a package deal: the secretary agrees to all aspects of the job when she agrees to accept the job and especially when she agrees to keep the job.”

Well, this is obviously insane, but I’m not going to focus on that per se.  This guy is sort of the Ann Coulter of the ancap movement: he says a lot of things that are intentionally provocative and actually end up inadvertently demonstrating the bankruptcy of the entire ideology, by taking it to its logical conclusion.  [update: apparently he has withdrawn this particular statement.  well, that's irrelevant; this isn't intended to be a witch hunt, but an opportunity to examine some of the premises that led to this sort of statement, which are very much alive and well in this line of thinking.]  I think I know on what basis this scenario is likely to be criticized, so what I want to do is to examine why the problems in this way of thinking go deeper than that, and why we are not going to be able to avoid this kind of nonsense until we uproot the authoritarian myths that constitute capitalist apologetics.

1. The “package-deal”

Let’s say I have a house.  In a free society, would I be able to make some sort of demand such as: “everyone who comes in my house must take off all their clothes!”  Well, the answer is yes, because you don’t have to allow people into your house in the first place.  So by restricting the conditions on which one can come in your house, you’re not taking away from a right that already exists, but actually granting a right that did not previously exist.  (Not because the space within which your house rests is your dominion, mind you, but because for people to intrude in your living space would violate your basic privacy.  In this particular situation the difference becomes meaningless.)  And of course there are certain exceptions, like if someone had to come in for an emergency, chances are the people around you would not much respect your ability to enforce this “rule”, and so it would have no authority.

OK.  But now let’s say that I occasionally make this demand of people, but not always.  And let’s say I invite you over to dinner, and in the middle of dinner I suddenly demand that you respect this rule of mine.  Is it reasonable that you respect it?…No.  In theory you would have to leave the house (since you were only in by invitation in the first place) but in practice it is more likely that, although you’d be likely to simply leave in disgust, you might on the other hand stay until the end of dinner as you would have originally, without obeying the command, and other people would not be willing to enforce my eviction of you if they knew the situation, so I would have no means of getting rid of you other than physically pushing you out.  So it would just end up making me look rather silly.  A more clear example of this situation is when a boat-owner takes people out into a lake.  Can he throw them out if he decides he doesn’t want them on his property?    Obviously not.

So the most basic critique of Walter Block’s statement is that sexual harassment can hardly be considered to be part of a “package-deal” to work somewhere — unless it was explicitly part of the work description — um, yay?  No more than being thrown into the ocean is part of a “package-deal” of being invited onto somebody’s boat, or having to strip naked is part of a package-deal of being invited to someone’s house, or anything like that.  As such, it would be aggression, plain and simple.  This is probably the critique that most left-libertarians will make.

2. (yawn) Use-property vs. Exchange-property

But I want to go further than this.  Implicit in the argument I have given above is that coming to work in an office is the same type of situation as coming to someone’s house for dinner.  But the point of my last essay was to show that it is not.  Let’s go over the reasons:

Dominion, such as one has over one’s own living-space, is always a secondary expression of property in one’s labor.  In other words, it descends from the right to apply one’s labor, but is not the primary form of it, and is always (in an anarchy) construed such that nobody has dominion over another — thus, to the extent that anyone would have dominion over anything, it would be those who are using it.  Now.  Let’s be as generous as possible to our hypothetical boss and assume that the boss is one of a group of laborers who either built the office themselves or purchased it with labor-based income only–i.e. a mutualist setup.  Let’s assume that they built it themselves, for the sake of simplicity — it doesn’t really matter in the final analysis.  What does this entitle them to?  Well, as I tried to establish before, having built it they can either go on to use it, or they can sell it.  They can’t sell the right to dominion over the space where the office is because that isn’t theirs to give; what they are selling is their labor — that is, someone would pay them to get them to make the office.

Once those who have built it have gotten whatever they can for their labor, then it is use that determines “ownership” over this office.  This could resolve into several different scenarios.  Most likely the people who were building it would either continue to use it themselves or they would have been paid in advance, in which case they would then leave and the people who had paid them would then move in and use it, with the definition of abandonment to be determined by the specific situation at hand.  Another possibility would be that they would continue to work there and sell “shares” (ugh) of ownership and this is how they would be paid for the work they had done, complementing the returns from the productivity of the office when they themselves are working in it.  Buying a share would be paying them for the work they did in buying/building the equivalent parcel of capital; hence, to do so would mean that the new worker would keep the surplus value of her own labor henceforth.

This is the situation that the secretary would be presented with, in a free society.  The office is not at all like someone’s house where they can set the rules — it is an association of laborers.  So the “property” that the “boss” would have that the secretary wouldn’t have would be represented by the work previously done that he is trying to get compensated for (i.e. sell) — which is an abstraction.  It’s physical only in that it means the secretary wouldn’t be able to smash the office (well, actually…see point #3) but would have zero bearing on whether the secretary (or anyone else, for that matter) could be there, and certainly on whether the “boss” would have dominion over the secretary.  In other words, it is not property as dominion — it is not the same thing as owning a house.  The extent of the “dominion” the workers would have over their office would be limited by the specific facts, most importantly the number of people working there.  Since the right of workers to have control over their workplace is the daughter, not the mother, of the right to the fruit of their labor — which is universal — it doesn’t make any sense to say that this right could be construed such as to control one of the people who is also working there!  So in that case, taking in new people to the office would work like this: there would be an “entrance fee” which would represent paying the people who had built the office for the work done in getting that parcel of capital ready to use — it would not represent permission to enter the office, which isn’t anyone’s to give.  Then, the secretary having paid off the labor embedded in the capital (or having arranged to), use would determine ownership, so she would have total control over her own working conditions, all surplus value she creates would belong to her, and she would co-manage the place just as much as anyone else — and so it goes without saying that pinching her butt would be seen as aggression, just as much as pinching the “boss’s” butt would be.

Capitalist political economy, which has as its aim the mystification and preservation of authoritarian social relations, does so with a Robinson Crusoe-esque mythology that presents finding a job as the same type of thing as being invited into somebody’s home or backyard.  If this assumption is preserved, then arguing against the authoritarian bullshit that inevitably follows will be a losing battle.  It’s like trying to argue against the excesses of the U.S. government but insisting that it is essentially legitimate.  So it is this very assumption that needs to be uprooted.  The purpose of an office is not a place to have dominion over except insofar as that enables the workers to work unhindered; it is as an association of laborers who have come together to do some task, and each be rewarded for their work done.  Why exactly should the laborers who “get there first” have any sort of dominion over later ones (assuming that were even a remotely accurate description of capitalism, when it’s really just part of the mythology)?

“But can they prevent the secretary from coming in?”  is probably the question that will be used to rebut this.  It’s like this: they can prevent the secretary from using the office without paying if they have chosen selling-to-users as the method by which they will be compensated for building the office; not because they can prevent her from entering it, but because they still need to find a buyer, and if she started working there without agreeing to pay for the capital, that would prevent them from doing that, and thus would constitute a sort of robbery.  And if there is a different way they are being compensated (which I think is more likely) then the situation would either resolve into one very much like this or they wouldn’t be able to prevent the secretary from coming in and working there — if, say, the office had been funded by a community assembly of people who want it to exist.

As a final, and somewhat related note, it is circular reasoning to say that the “boss” owns the materials the secretary works with, because he buys them.  Well, yes, because he steals the income of the secretary…which is what is being justified in the first place!  Even if he owned them at first, how would he be able to prevent the secretary from buying the tools of production directly from the producers if they didn’t recognize her productivity as being bestowed by him in the first place?

3. The Real World

This whole sort of situation would only be happening anyway if a group of people build an office from scratch after an anarchistic revolution.  Then it won’t matter much — probably a lot of offbeat things will be happening, somewhere or another.  Getting back to the real world and to NOW, we have to understand civilization, not as a gift given to us by a handful of benevolent princelings nor by some well-placed groups of workers, but as the common inheritance of all humanity — not so much due to some divine communist mandate as to the specific social conditions which have brought us to this point (i.e. if for the last few thousand years we had had benevolent small-scale market socialism, it wouldn’t be necessary to make this claim).  It’s unlikely there will be secretaries or bosses — just people.  And the majority of offices that exist now — those that won’t be burned up, anyway — you won’t have to ask the permission of those already there to start working there.  Period, end of story.  So it’s all pretty much a moot point.

Some Libertarian Socialist Fragments

Seeing as my recent post on “voluntary agreements” got a lot of hits from being linked, I realize that it might not make much sense if taken out of context of my other notes on the subject, together with the timeless arguments of such texts as Proudhon’s What is Property? (with which some familiarity, if not necessarily agreement, would be…um…helpful if you consider yourself an “anarchist”).  In keeping with my desire to make a comprehensive critique of the Rothbardian/Nozickian “homesteading” theory of property that, in some form or another, provides the theoretical justification for capitalism, I have been considering a new idea that, to me anyway, makes a lot more sense out of the whole thing.  The following observations might make more sense out of other related critiques, such as Iain McKay’s Anarchist Critique of “Anarcho”-Statism [sic], which has resurfaced lately.

Use-Property vs. Exchange-Property

Can labor-mixing create legitimate ownership?  Sure it can.  This isn’t a catechism, so I’m not going to derive that.  It’s something most everybody can agree on.  Clearly if you own yourself then you own your labor.  But — there are two ways one can exercise this ownership of one’s labor.  One can mix her labor with nature in order to use the things she is applying her labor to, or in order to exchange her labor for something provided by someone else.  If you don’t intend to use something (in a generous sense; this can include planning to use something later) or exchange it, then it can be safely assumed you have no interest in it as something that should be controlled by you exclusively, which is what property is, in the following argument anyway.  Then you don’t see it as labor, and other people shouldn’t either.  These two purposes of labor-mixing correspond to the use-value and exchange-value assigned to goods, in classical political economy.

So there are really two different things we might mean by property — the concrete property in the things we want to use, and the abstract property in the labor we perform, whose intent is (presumably) to be exchanged (in the form of currency) for that of the first kind — something concrete that can be used personally.  The first kind of property is acquired through actual homesteading (very rarely nowadays — do you hunt your own food?), or by way of exchange for the second kind of property, which one has in one’s own labor and what it creates.  Generally speaking, unless you’re living out in the wilderness and providing for your own needs, labor — no matter what kind it is — creates property of the second kind.  In market society, that is usually why people labor: to create abstract “property” which can be converted into concrete property by means of currency.  These two categories of property, use-property and exchange-property, are entirely different beasts.  Understanding the traditional anarchist view on property is going to require an understanding of this distinction.  The idea of property as dominion over a space applies to use-property; i.e., your house is your use-property, therefore you have the right to control what happens in it; you can say that people must take their shoes off before coming in, for example.  You have the right to control the things you use as well.  The opposition to one person’s dominion over another is an axiom of anarchism, one that is applicable to all situations.  So use-property as dominion is regulated by the number of people using something, for it then becomes a sort of shared dominion.

However, if one mixes his labor with something in order to exchange it, then it will be understood that he does not really have any interest in the thing itself (at least not in a way relevant to the following argument) — only the socially determined abstract value of the thing, which supposedly represents the value of his labor, to someone who wants it.  (Does it really?  That’s another question.)  We can safely assume that the person feels this way about the thing in question, for if he didn’t, he would simply keep using it.  In other words, “homesteading” is not really an accurate way to describe what is going on here: the person does not care about the land within which he works, the resources or tools used — just the value of the labor done.  So, homesteading only applies to the acquisition of use-property, not exchange-property.  This is going to be something very important to understand.  Something cannot have both exchange-value and use-value to you at the same time.  If you’re exchanging it, you’re not using it.  (This doesn’t include trivial situations like letting a friend borrow a bike; exchanging it is not the reason you acquired the bike and so it would not be categorized as exchange-property.)

When we look at it this way, the exchange made between capitalist and laborer is not much of an exchange at all: granting the extremely generous assumption that the capitalist labored to build the capital (!); the laborer gives her labor, while the capitalist doesn’t give hers or even a specific fraction of it as embedded in the capital; she keeps it indefinitely, to continue “exchanging” with other laborers eternally…until the capital wears down.

(But why would an exchange have to involve equal amounts of labor, though?  The answer is pretty simple: otherwise the laborer would simply build the capital herself or buy it from someone else, in the absence of a statist monopoly preventing that.  The cost of reproducing labor done is going to be the ceiling on the amount a buyer is willing to bother giving instead of doing it on her own. But this is going to be irrelevant to the main point I am making anyway.)

So there are two separate problems with absentee property, even if we make for the purposes of this…uh…discussion the completely and insultingly ahistorical assumption that the would-be absentee owner did indeed at some point labor to bring the property into a condition ready for use. The first is that this person retains dominion over the area, and the people there, even though it should be understood that the reason he labored to build it is not to use it, but to exchange his labor (embedded in the space/machinery/whatever) for whatever people are willing to give for it.  Because it is not the improved land/capital itself this person cares about, otherwise he would just add it to his belongings, there is no reason he should have dominion over the worker’s labor with it — even if he kept the capital afterwards.  Anarchism is anti-dominion, and we could still assume a Rothbardian/non-proviso-Lockean-based standard of property and observe that negating the dominion of the “capitalist” over the laborer would still not being violating his property rights.  In that case, the capitalist would get a portion of the output that depends on the total profit rather than on labor done, but would still not have authority over the workers during production.  (This inability to boss around the workers actually would be a violation of property rights in a traditional sense[how can he maximize profit without telling them what to do?], but one that, as I have tried to show, is incompatible with anarchist principles and need not be the only alternative to total negation of one’s labor-property, even assuming for the sake of argument that mutualism/socialism constitutes that.)  The other problem, of course, is that no real exchange is taking place — the absentee owner can use the same, single act of labor (!) to engage in near-infinite “exchanges”, when the reward he is entitled to for this labor is really no more than the cost of reproduction.

At the heart of the justification for absentee property, then, is the psychological conflation of use-property and exchange-property; and this conflation is a relic of political absolutism, in which all the world (or at least the land under control) was declared to be the personal property of the ruling class.  This worldview was a characteristic of pre-industrial societies — tsarist Russia, France under the Bourbons, ancient Egypt, take your pick — that has survived to the present day.  Capitalist property is sort of a half-way house between this antiquated view of property-as-dominion and a future egalitarian (in terms of rights) construct of property-as-labor.  So this psychological detritus from antiquity must be drained from our minds, in which it has accumulated through pro-elite conditioning.  What this means is that we are trained to think that working in a capitalist’s factory is roughly similar to coming to his house — you’re entering a space he has dominion over.  That’s why socialistic proposals of the workers taking over the factories are often angrily rebuffed with, “So if I invite you over for tea, then you own my house??!”  But this is not at all the case — even if the capitalist kept the factory perpetually no matter how many other people were working there, and especially not with the mutualist standard I have been advocating.  We need to look at the world differently, such that property in the sense of dominion only has relevance to use-property, i.e. something you are using personally, and the dominion aspect is weakened to the extent there are other people also using it.  The compensation/returns the “capitalist” gets for the capital he has built is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether he has dominion over those working there.  By “exchanging” his labor, whatever he may get for it (even if he got it back intact at the end, a la Rothbard, a view that of course I am trying to attack simultaneously), it is understood that, even if he “homesteaded” it, he no longer has control over those using it.  To say otherwise would be to say that it is his use-property, but you can’t have it both ways.  Something cannot be your use-property and your exchange-property at the same time — it doesn’t make any sense.

Notice that this means taking what “the product of one’s labor” really amounts to under capitalism, and universalizing it.  Under capitalism, the labor done by the wage-earner does not give him control over the area where he works, the capital he works with, or the ends of production — only the wage, which is supposedly the exchange-value of his labor, an abstract quantity.  Their ability to “homestead” is nonexistent.  But a theory of property acquisition through labor must be consistent, applying to all people equally, if it is to be upheld by a rational populace.  If the homesteading theory of property applies to no laborers, then non-worker ownership of factories is merely arbitrary tyranny: where on earth does it come from?  Whereas if the homesteading theory of property applies to all laborers, then those who work at a place will be its owners, provided that those who constructed it have been compensated in full.

On the surface, I have demolished rather than advanced the idea that workers should “own” the means of production.  But in fact, the preceding arguments merely present a canvas upon which the actual substance of a free society can be painted.  Worker’s self-management does not come from homesteading, but from the basic anarchist principles of, well, self-management and personal freedom.  An example I like: let’s say someone says you have to get their permission to swim in the ocean, mocking your objection that paddling in the water would cause you to own the spot where you are swimming.  Well, they would be right, paddling doesn’t cause you to own a part of the ocean…but that ignores the elephant in the living room, which is why would they own it?  And then you could pretty reasonably make the case to have control over your own swim without having to argue that you’re homesteading the water while doing so.

A Recap

It must be emphasized that the mutualist conception of occupation and use occurring through actual exchanges of labor, meaning exchanges of ownership between “capitalist” and “laborer”, is not some sort of “rule” that’s going to be forced on people from above.  It’s simply going to be a natural consequence of…a free(d) market(!!!).  Example: Suppose that A builds saws.  He does so not to keep them, for he already has a saw, but in order to sell them on the free market.  A sells a saw to B for $20.  Once A gets the $20, he no longer has any control over the saw: that’s the whole point of exchange.  The $20 was all he cared about in the first place — it didn’t matter whether it was building saws or something else.  So B goes home with her saw, and at first uses it around the home.  But then she has the idea of using it to cut wood and make boards out of it, and sell the boards.  So now the saw is capital.  Does A have the right to demand a share of her takings?  Clearly, the answer is no.  The price of saws is generally going to depend on the cost of reproduction, not the usefulness.  If A started to overcharge to cash in on this, B would save by making her own saws, or buying them from someone else.  If A wants to profit off this board-sawing industry, he’s gonna have to use a saw on his own.

Such is the paradigm for working with capital: for those intending to do so, the default understanding would be that they would purchase it at somewhere between the cost of reproduction and the cost of production from those whose labor is stored in it; whatever the price might be (and it might take years of labor to be paid back!), this does away with both workplace hierarchy and non-labor income.  This means there is just one thing left to consider: what if those who built the capital are saying people will only be allowed to work there if they become their wage laborers, etc.?  Well, see my July post on cost-price: it is, basically by definition, only by aggressive monopoly that they can prevent either free competition in capital, or if necessary simply the workers going ahead and building their own equivalent factory/workshop/whatever.  (If this position was somehow due simply to natural scarcity[and this might not even be possible when Tucker's overt "big four" monopolies are destroyed], then the parties involved would be perfectly justified in setting a socially determined “just price” to compensate the would-be capitalists, and then the workers would move in and run it.  Insofar as we move out of the “state of nature”, the capitalism that was originally justified with metaphors of homesteading becomes no more defensible than attempts to “interfere” with it.  Actually I think this is going to be completely irrelevant to any actual anarchy we might live to see, since that’s going to involve a more or less full-scale worker/social expropriation of existing, non-trivial means of production, but that’s a separate topic.)  So free markets make capitalism impossible and vice versa.  And indeed, moving out of our Robinson Crusoe world into the real world, we see that this is indeed the case: capitalism did arise through aggressive State-backed primitive accumulation, and limitations on credit and land, no matter where you look.  Note that what I have done is not so much describe what I think a free society will actually look like — I think a lot of these scenarios that get brought up ad nauseam by those on both sides will be pretty much irrelevant after an anarchistic revolution — but rather to take on the homesteading argument, on its own turf.

So from this we can see that doing away with hierarchy does not, as has been feared, restrict individual freedom.  A person can labor without restriction, and the reward of her labor merely shifts from dominion to value, the moment that the former would imply control over other people, which can never be accepted.  Also, I think that truly grasping this idea, of the distinction between use-property and exchange-property, means uprooting the psychological subjection that, in some form or another, has characterized social relations in the “civilized” world since the days of the pyramids: the notion that we are guests in a Master’s world.  It means realizing that outside of personal use — our homes, yards, and property for which unauthorized entry would damage its purpose — no part of the world is someone’s dominion; people can be rewarded for their labor in whatever way they see as appropriate (gold standard, markets, effort & sacrifice, labor-notes, need, desire, ???) without ever creating any form of dominion of one person over another.  Hopefully this makes more sense of the occupation-and-use theory of property.  Understanding this, rather than seeing the world as already divided up into a bunch of mini-fiefdoms, is one of the most profound forms of self-liberation from the sickness of social submission.

Your Daily Dose of Surrealism

I think I’ll let the “anarcho”-capitalists speak for themselves:

“Our anarchism comes from taking Austrian economics to its ultimate logical conclusions. Theres [sic] comes from just really hating the man. WAH.”

–from a Facebook comment thread, 8/29/09

Uh, yeah, that whole opposition to rulers thing is sort of like “hating the man” if you want to call it that.  And it’s strange that — oh forget it, do I even need to comment?

Sometimes mere repetition is the best detournement

(From Investopedia.)

Recessions are hard on everyone – aren’t they? Actually, just as wars have their war babies (companies that perform well during war and suffer during peace), recessions have their tough offspring as well. In this article we’ll take a look at the industries that flourish in the adversity of a recession and why they do so well when everyone else is struggling to make ends meet[sic]. (For related reading, see Recession: What Does It Mean To Investors? and War’s Influence On Wall Street. [sic])

// <![CDATA[//

Discount Retailers
It makes sense that, as budgets feel the strain of an economic downturn, people turn to the stores that offer the most for the least. Discount retailers like Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) do well at any time, but this is not entirely true. They often suffer in good times as people flush with money buy higher-quality goods at competing outlets. To remain competitive, they are forced to upgrade their product lines and change the focus of their business from thrift to quality. Their profits suffer from either lost sales or less margin on the goods they sell.

In hard times, however, these retailers excel by going back to core products and using vast economies of scale to give cheap goods to consumers. Designers and producers of lower-end products also see an upswing as more people jump from brand names to make their paychecks go further. People may not like discount retailers, but in a recession most people end up shopping there. (Learn one way these companies make their money in What Are Economies Of Scale?)

Sin Industries
In bad times, the bad do well. Although it seems a little counterintuitive, people patronize the sin industry more during a recession. In good times, these same people might have bought new shoes, a new stereo or other, bigger-ticket items. In bad times, however, the desire for comforts doesn't leave, it simply scales down. People will pass on the stereo, but a nightly glass of wine, a pack of cigarettes or a chocolate bar are small expenditures that help hold back the general malaise [sic] that comes with being tight on cash.

Be warned, though – not all sin businesses prosper in a recession. Gambling, with the exception of the truly troubled gamblers, becomes an extravagance and generally declines during recessions. In fact, casinos do their best trade when the economy is roaring and everyone feels lucky. The most prosperous businesses in this industry are the purveyors of small pleasures that can be bought at a gas station or convenience store. (To find out if it pays pick your portfolio based on ethics, read Socially Responsible Investing Vs. Sin Stocks and Socially (Ir)responsible Mutual Funds.)

Selected Services
Expect a downturn in the service industry as a whole, as companies and families are willing to do more themselves to save money. A certain class of service providers will see an upswing during hard times though. Companies that specialize in upgrading and maintaining existing equipment and products see their business increase as more clients focus on working with what they have now rather than buying a newer model. (Read Less Trash For More Cash to learn how eco-friendly practices can be good for your wallet as well as the planet.)

In the real estate industry, they say renovators hire as builders fire, and this holds true for many other industries as well.

The Statics
In a recession, simply carrying on with business as usual can be an achievement. Pharmaceuticals, healthcare companies, tax service companies, gravediggers[sic], waste disposal companies and many others are in a category that, while not jumping ahead during a recession, can plod along while other companies suffer. This is simply because people get sick, get taxed and die (not always in that order[sic]) no matter what the economy is like. Sometimes the most boring businesses offer the most consistent and, in context, exciting returns. (Read A Checklist For Successful Medical Technology Investment and Build Your Portfolio With Infrastructure Investments to learn more about putting your money into these stable industries.)

The Benefits Of Recession
The biggest benefit of hard times is that companies get hurt for inefficiencies that they laughed off in better times. A recession means general fat trimming [sic] for companies, from which they should emerge stronger, and that’s good news for investors.

One of the best signs is a company in a hard-hit industry that is expanding anyway. For example, McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) continued to grow in the 1970s downturn even though restaurants generally suffered as people cooked rather than going out to eat. Similarly,Toyota (NYSE:TM) was opening new American plants in the 1990s downturn when the Big Three were closing theirs due to falling sales for new cars. (Read more about the 1970s economy in Stagflation, 1970s Style.)

A recession can be a blessing for investors[sic], as it is much easier to spot a strong company without the white noise of a strong economy. (Read how certainINSURRECTION strategies can help you cut through market noise in Trading Without Noise.)

Waiting It Out
Although it is good to know which companies excel in a recession, investing according to economic cycles can be difficult. If you do invest in these industries during a recession, you have pay careful attention to your investment so you can readjust your portfolio before the economy rebounds, stemming the advances the recession-proof industries have made. (Read more about how to take advantage of market fluctuations in The Ups And Downs Of Investing In Cyclical Stocks.)

Some of the companies performing well in a recession will also perform well in a recovery, and more will change their business to take advantage of it, but many will be passed by theirARMEDRESISTANCE that race ahead in bull markets – financials, technology firms and other faster-moving industries. With the proper ANARCHYtiming, however, these industries can provide a buffer within your portfolio while you wait for your high fliers to take off again.

Plagiarism is necessary; progress demands it.

In Japan, unemployment is at a six-year high.

Wages have hit a record low.

But The Economy is doing great! Thanks for asking.