yes, we can’t

(here is the the poetic version)

i was reading this text the other day (yes, it’s in portuguese. use chat-gpt or something). it goes through an overall very charitable and thorough critique of anarcho-capitalism, from a libertarian socialist pov.

let’s bracket whatever substantial agreement or disagreement i may have with ancaps or libsocs for now. whenever a text like this pops, i always read it through my teeth, expecting the moment this bracketing will take place. obviously, it almost never does.

thing is: this kind of argumentation is proceeding from the idea that, all things considered, convincing enough people to change to your ideological side is both important and feasible. the author is always trying to frame the other side as naive idealists reaching for some kind of impossible utopia, contrary to human nature, etc. ancaps are imagining a perfect world of rational beings, the socialists are imagining a perfect world of cooperative beings, and what else not. the message is, ulltimately, simply “come to this side”.

why is this important? because both sides think that, once they have enough people, they can enact, locally or globally, their preferred scenario. they pressupose action, and thus choice.

as humans, we live through those pressupositions most of the time. they are good models of how things happen in daily human interaction. ultimately, we have to believe people choose and do things out of will, to coordinate any society at all.

my contention here is (enough suspense): that’s idealism, all of it. free will is an idea that lacks any foundation in reality. it’s turtles all the way down! anybody familiar with modern physics knows this, at least theoretically. the universe is deterministic. everything happens in a cascade of causes and consequences. your brain isn’t safe from this.

the libsoc is trying to point to the ancap that the historical process trumps individual action, but he’s blind to how historical process trumps collective action as well. the choices that you make in the theatre of conscience are just that: staging. they are arising from processes you can’t fathom, for purposes that aren’t yours.

obviously, whenever i come to determinism, somebody is always asking: why are you doing this here then? who knows, i’m content with having done.

most i can offer from this: don’t worry, whatever must, will.

against socialism

It’s been sometime I have asked myself if it still makes any sense to say I am a “leftist”. One thing though, is sure: I deeply reject socialism.

All force society – by means of the products necessary to the formation of a society, viz. morality, tradition, authority, desire suppression, discipline, indoctrination, and everything else we can reasonably call oppression – is extremely repugnant to me. If there is a battle between social power and some individual, I will always side with the individual.

Hence my preference for exit options over voice concession, fragile and easily renewable (“liquid”) interactions over participation in rigid, predefined deliberative bodies, action at the outskirts of institutional politics over political representation, explicit contracts over custom-based expectations, and so forth.

If I can still say I am a “leftist”, which would be to say, if I still advocate some sort of equality, it is only insofar as I advocate for absolute equality of power among people (yes, this is difficult to realize, and it’s by no means even clear that it’s realistically feasible), that is, I advocate liberty in its radical form. Any other kind of equality, insofar as it depends on social force over the individual to be realized, I reject it.

As a mutualist, I certainly do not believe that social force itself could be abolished, since the very individual action already begets all kinds of association. I do believe indeed that without some obstinate opposition, the social body becomes totalitarian and suppresses entirely any ability to change (and hence adaptation). Hence the proudhonian horror to communism.

Thus, one question remains to be answered: can a non-socialist left exist?