Forum Post: Debunking Libertarian Myths pt. 1
Posted 12 years ago on July 9, 2012, 11:20 a.m. EST by struggleforfreedom80
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Myth #1:
“Only in an unregulated capitalist economy, we'll have a truly free marked”
The marked in this kind of economy is not in any way free.
The way things function in a non-regulated capitalist society (like all others) is that the more resources and wealth you have, the more power you have. So in this kind of society it is the big corporations and the financial elite who overwhelmingly are in charge of the economy and marked (very similar to today's actual society). They control the resources, the economic institutions, and the means of production. In other words: They have an overwhelming power over the economy and the marked as a whole.
Not only do the rich and powerful (in an undemocratic way) control the economy as a whole in huge networks of transactions, investments and stock exchange, they also rule the institutions in this kind of society in a totalitarian way. The economic institutions in a capitalist society have a totalitarian model: a tyrannical non-democratic hierarchy in which the people at the top – the CEOs, owners etc – dictate how the institution is being run, what’s being produced, working conditions and so on, while people further down the hierarchy must follow their orders – a non-democratic hierarchy with control and power in the hands of the ones at the top. Capitalist institutions are in other words private tyrannies
A society that is organized in a way that allows a little minority of super-wealthy individuals and totalitarian and powerful corporations to have the overwhelming control in society and the marked, is not free trade; on the contrary, that’s command economy and private tyranny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYxGkFxb7f4
Myth #2:
”In an unregulated capitalist marked, people voluntarily associate and trade with each other”
Agreements taking place in this kind of system are far from being voluntary. In a capitalist class society you have some people with huge wealth and recourses, and others with very few or no wealth and resources. It’s of course meaningless to talk about “voluntary agreements” in such a society because the ones owning the recourses, the wealth and the means of production etc, have much more power in society. That includes of course that they have the advantage and overwhelming power in a job hiring, negotiations and so on. So the non-owners – the workers – are trapped in a society in which they, in order to have a decent life or necessities in order to survive, must sell their labor to people who have much more power than they have. This has very little to do with voluntary agreements, rather it’s submission to necessities.
So in a capitalist society, we have a system in which some people, because of their wealth and ownership, have an overwhelming power in society, including in the labor marked. The owners and employers then have much more influence and power when contracts and agreements are being made, whether it’s in relation to working conditions, salaries etc. etc.
They are myths and toxic but only outside the context of a self-regulating society.
The so called "libertarian" ideology is a call for private tyranny.
The economic institutions must be controlled democratically by the workers and the communities.