I'm currently reading James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State. See this excellent review by Scott Alexander here, and this other excellent review here. It was also a topic of Cato Unbound, the monthly forum of dueling (meleeing?) essays. So far it's very good. Like James Scott, I consider myself an anarchist, philosophically speaking. But he is a very different kind of anarchist. It is very clear from his writings that he is a "left anarchist." He sees free markets and monetary transactions as being the same kinds of power structures as traditional government.
I'm a libertarian in the anarchocapitalist tradition. I see market transactions as voluntary interactions between consenting adults. "But," you say, "Party A really needs what Party B has, while Party B can take or leave Party A. Market power!" I reject this framing. I actually think it means Party B is helping Party A, apparently far more so than anyone else is helping A. If B is the only one helping A, to me this sounds like B is doing A a favor. And if A can simply take their business elsewhere, then B certainly has no power over A. It just seems odd that we should identify the party that is doing the most to help someone and then berate them, accuse them of monopoly, compare them to a dictator, and so on.
To get a feel for the different styles, see this discussion. In that excellent video, David Friedman presents the anarchocapitalist view, James C. Scott presents his left-anarchist view, and Robert Ellickson presents a more traditional classical liberal or libertarian view. (Ellickson wrote the excellent book Order Without Law, which I actually consider to be one of my anarchocapitalist influences. So it was interesting to see him take the "not anarchy" side of the debate.) Paraphrasing Friedman here: James C. Scott's book is the kind of book that anarchocapitalists should like, because it presents a lot of evidence of grand government plans doing enormous harm and going sideways. But he takes every opportunity to remind his readers that he's not one of those icky market libertarians.
Having read ~100 pages into Seeing Like a State and hearing Scott's commentary from this and other talks, I concur with Friedman's assessment. The market-bashing catches me off guard. I find myself often going. "yes. Yes. Yes! That's right! Wait...facile, stilted anti-market leftism? How does that even fit in here?"
I hope to avoid straw-manning, but here we go. James Scott's examples of market/monetary transactions being like government coercion really miss the mark. See the talk from ~15 minutes to ~25 minutes, and see David Friedman's responses just after. Scott points out that everyone gets one vote, but people have very different numbers of "dollars." From this premise he attempts to argue that rich people can simply get their way all the time. Friedman demolishes this argument later in the video by pointing out that a voting coalition can perpetually outvote another smaller coalition. The winning coalition can vote to have all of the grain allocated to itself, then all the paper, then all the electricity, and so on. When people are bidding for goods with dollars rather than votes, they can only spend those dollars once. So while it's possible that the rich will buy up all the flour in the world to make bread and then paper mache for their arts and crafts, it's more likely that the poor will outbid the rich for the frivolous uses of the food supply. It's also the case that rich people do better under government institutions. It simply is not the case that government flattens the playing field for everyone. It is precisely those upper classes who get the better schools and better police protection. When goods and services are allocated based political considerations and skills in manipulating the bureaucratic machinery, it is the upper classes who are best off. (Friedman offers the example of lanes on roads in Moscow that only government officials could use.) I can't quite tell if Scott is endorsing democracy. Maybe that will be clearer in his book, but it would be strange for someone in the anarchist tradition to do so. Maybe he's just talking about the "very small d" democracy of town halls and tribal meetings deciding things as a group, as opposed to a democratically elected government ruling over a large nation.
James Scott offers a bizarre example of "rich people winning the bidding process against poor people." He points out that rich American celebrities might be able to adopt an African orphan, while a local family would have zero chance of outbidding them. This example only makes sense if you see the orphan as a commodity and not as a human being. If the rich family is allowed to adopt the orphan, a voluntary transfer of wealth has happened, vastly increasing the resources available to the child. This kind of adoption reduces the kind of inequality that Scott is harping on. (This is just occurring to me just now: Is there open bidding on the orphan market? If not literal auctioneer bidding, is there actually someone saying, "We need to increase the 'fee' for adoption to charge those rich American celebrities more. Naturally, this will make it harder for locals to adopt these children." I don't know much about the international adoption process. I know there are some shady cash-only transactions, because I heard the details of an international adoption by a family I know. But I'd be surprised if there's a kind of outbidding or "pricing-out-of-the-market" that Scott is imagining.) This is probably his most confused example, but I don't think the other ones he offers redeem his worldview.
I see a few left anarchists on my Facebook page, and I think they are just terribly confused. Reading Scott, who is an intelligent defender of that worldview, doesn't make them seem any more respectable. They seem to object to any form of hierarchical power structure, even one which people enter voluntarily. That is literally the position taken by some Portland anarchists. They responded to the Reason piece linked to in the prior sentence on Facebook, reiterating how much they hate capitalists. (I suppose this is another example of left anarchists going out of their way to remind everyone that they aren't icky market libertarians. "Ew, that libertarian rag is praising us? Slap their outreached hand away! Now!") The very few left anarchists on my Facebook feed are reliably vanilla lefty-Democrats when it comes to any culture war issue or policy fight. If there is a Republican initiative to reduce taxes or cut the welfare state, these people line up with the other Democrats to bash the stupid, unenlightened Republicans. I want to say, "Hey, doesn't 'anarchy' have something to do with not wanting government?" (Leela: "Fry, that's the only thing about anarchy!") This is probably an unfair sampling and there are probably more ideologically principled and consistent left-anarchists. But so far James Scott, as one of their representatives, has failed to redeem them.
I sometimes imagine this kind of exchange between anarchocapitalism and anarchosocialism.
AC: Hey, there's a push to repeal most of the welfare state and sharply reduce taxes and government spending. Smash the state, right?
AS: Actually...I kind of think all that stuff should stay right where it is for now. Until the revolution comes, of course. Once the enlightened Socialist Mankind has arrived, we will not need these government institutions.
AC: Um, okay. Well, when the revolution does come, I can have a factory where I'm the boss, right? I mean, I understand that you don't like these kinds of power structures. But if that's a superior way to get things done, you'll let it operate and not physically attack me, right?
AS: Actually...we'll probably rabble-rouse the workers until they march on your factory and occupy it. There will be no police force to stop them. And if you hire private security, we'll probably arm the workers. You can try it, but your stuff will end up being collectively owned by the workers.
AC: Okay, geez. I didn't realize you 'anarchists' were so keen on using organized violence to reshape society. Sounds a lot like "government" to me. How does non-market/non-monetary allocation work in the anarchosocialist economy? Will I get an allocation of paper and ink to start a pro-capitalist newspaper? I presume there'll be a socialist version of such newspapers. You'll give these similar projects equal treatment, right?
AS: ...
AC: Okay, I guess I give up.
If I get a better understanding of left anarchy, I will attempt a longer "steel man" version of this hypothetical exchange (in which admittedly I am literally putting words into people's mouths). I've read quite a lot of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, so I should have come across the sophisticated version of this worldview. I still feel like I haven't. Maybe James Scott fills that role.
I should clarify that none of the above impugns Seeing Like a State. It's a truly original book, which I am still devouring.
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