The General Eh

Anarcho-syndicalism, for all its flaws, does contain within it a radical idea. Specifically within the idea of the General Strike. The idea is this: What if everyone stopped working all at once? Isn't that a wonderful idea? Everyone just refusing to work. However, past that, things veer off course when they introduce the demand that the industries be handed over to them so that they can return to work. However, I wish to rescue this brilliant nugget with my own proposal: The General Eh.

So how does the General Eh differ from the General Strike? Whereas, in the General Strike, the workers make demands of their employers to get back to work, in the General Eh, no demands are made. No longer working is the goal of the General Eh. Whereas, in the General Strike,  the workers get up and fight for their workplace, in the General Eh, everyone just stays at home. People stop being workers and do their own thing. They renounce the authority of the state and the necessity of their jobs. They sleep in. They plant gardens or have dinner in a field with their loved ones. They fight back, if the capitalists try and force them back to work, or if the police try to force them to obey the law, but they aren't fighting to get something because they already have everything they want. Everyone becomes free in an instant merely by deciding to walk away. That is the General Eh. It's the General Strike for those who think that's too much work, and, indeed, too much like the job they stop working at.

Beginnings of a Comprehensive Economic Theory: Economic Crisis, Especially in Capitalism

What causes an economic crisis? I'm not certain, but, given what I've investigated so far, I'm inclined to think it is an imbalance in the three struggles. Indeed, imbalance in one of the struggles leads to imbalance in at least one other, if not both. If the buyer start winning the struggle between buyer and seller, profits fall, which companies turn into laying off workers allowing them to lower wages. One company dominating a market leads to high prices and low wages, since they need hire less people to produce the same amount thanks to economics of scale, though profits soar. Bosses starting to crush workers leads to lower wages, which means that the companies can't sell as much. Sellers winning out on prices more, but causes buyers to stop buying, so the sellers begin losing, and the buyers start winning. Workers winning out over bosses causes bosses to rise prices to compensate for high wages and fire a lot of workers, which causes them to dominate the seller-buyer struggle.

Notice how in all of those, the workers and buyers are hurt far more than the companies which employ them and sell to them.

A good example of a worker crisis is the stagflation in the 70s. Unions gained a lot of power. In response, bosses raised prices and culled workers. This was termed stagflation, and is exactly what should happen when unions gain power.

Our current recession is a boss crisis caused by a buyer crisis, which expanded with the boss crisis, caused by a seller crisis, otherwise known as a clusterfuck. The housing bubble was caused by sellers lying to buyers to convince them to buy. As that kept going and going, they made a ton of money. However, the lie got exposed, and buyers stopped wanting to buy. This caused the companies to quickly lose a lot of money. This meant they started firing workers to lower wages. As they did so, people stopped buying elsewhere, so other markets were forced to fire workers to lower wages and earn less.

Beginnings of a Comprehensive Economic Theory: Worker-Boss Struggle

I'd like to focus on each of the three struggles individually. While each is broadly the same, the devil is in the details, so the details it is.

Now, before we begin, there needs to be some way to measure this struggle for us to even hope to study it. Luckily, there are a couple, depending on certain factors. If a currency is backed by something, like, say, gold, then wages are the best measure. When wages are high, the workers have a lot of power. When wages are low, the bosses have a lot of power. If a currency is fiat, then inflation is a better measure. When wages rise, bosses need to raise prices, if they want to continue to make money. In reality, inflation under a fiat currency is measuring wages, but it is aggregate so it's a better method. (This is the part I'm most unsure about and the part that will go through many revisions in the future. Any way to improve this part any of you can think of can go in the comments. Thank you.)

In addition, there are many ways for one side to have power over the other. One basic thing is unemployment. When unemployment is high, the bosses have power since they can always find new workers, so they can fire workers with impunity. The opposite is true of low unemployment.

Of course, not everything can work like unemployment, and will only grant one side power. For example, unions can only really grant power to workers.

On the side of the bosses, they have similar organizing. The difference is theirs is institutionalized. The organizational structure of the company itself is the organization that empowers the bosses.

In addition, regardless of how they feel about each other outside of this struggle, all bosses are allies in this struggle and all workers are allies in this struggle. Workers who gain power encourage those who don't to unionize and fight for more power, just because they can see the other workers winning, which is inspiring.

That's why companies don't encourage workers of the companies they compete with to unionize. This is also why unions often strike when other unions strike in a show of solidarity and bosses share troublemakers with each other creating blacklists.

This creates inefficiency in a number of ways. First and foremost is strikes. That's time, energy, and resources being put into the struggle rather than elsewhere. Second is systemic unemployment. That's labor that could go somewhere productive, but isn't going anywhere. Third is the resources bosses use to regulate and control the workers.

Deconstruction of the Left: Post-Left Anarchism and Post-Post-Left Anarchism

Deconstruction is a technique developed by Jacque Derrida in which someone investigates a literary work or an idea to take it apart, find its contradictions, challenge the universally accepted meaning of things, and finding new meaning within it. To put it simply, it deconstructs preconceived notions and meanings to find new meanings and show how no meaning is fundamentally the right one.

Post-left anarchism is a form of anarchist thought that critiques or "moves beyond" the left. Specifically, it holds critiques of organization, ideology, moralism, work, and revolution, as leftists see it. They instead advocate self-theory, moral nihilism, affinity groups, and immediatism.

Fundamentally, whether intentional or not, and I'm hedging my bets on not for reasons that should become obvious later, post-left anarchism is a deconstruction of leftism. They take apart the leftist theory of revolution, find the contradiction between the liberatory rhetoric of it and putting the revolution in the future rather than now when we need it, and challenging how revolutionary it is. They take apart leftist organization, find the contradiction of freedom and equality of leftist goals and the reality of unequal and unfree goals, and challenging the necessity of organization. They take apart ideology, find the contradiction between the freedom it espouses and how it constrains by forcing people to accept it and act under it, and challenges the need for overarching metatheories rather than individual theories. They take apart moralism, find the contradiction between the leftist goals of freedom and individualism and how morality, especially enforced or universal morality, causes people and attitudes to conform. They take apart work, find a contradiction between the freedom espoused by the left and the confinement and entrapment of work, and challenge how necessary it is to society.

All of these critiques are useful and true. Indeed, deconstruction is a powerful tool for analysis. However, post-left anarchism tends to use esoteric meanings for what they critique. For example, no leftist would define leftism as more than the goals of freedom and equality. Under that definition, despite the post-leftists moving beyond leftism and leaving it, they are leftists. In that sense, they are post-leftist leftists. However, such a critique misses the broader issue: They deconstruct the left, but don't go far enough. If you'll notice, with every example of their deconstruction of the left, I mentioned them taking it apart, finding contradictions, and challenging universally accepted meanings. It is at this point that their deconstruction ends, leaving out arguably the most important part: Finding new meaning within it. Oh, they propose their own type of group, their own theory of revolution, and their own theory on morality, but, fundamentally, those are just the rejection of leftist organization, revolution, and morality, not new meaning found within, or even outside of, those three. Their deconstruction of the left is incomplete. This contradiction, between the deconstruction and lack thereof, is where the esoteric definitions come from. They aren't defining organization by its reductionism, professionalism, substitutionism, and ideology for shits and giggles. They are doing so because that's what they see it as. This stems from, and arguably causes, them not finishing their deconstruction.

But how does one finish the deconstruction they started? We cannot exactly pick up where they left off, after all we aren't them. Rather, we must, in an ultimate meta-act, deconstruct them, thus allowing us to move beyond them, without leaving them. In that way, we become post-post-leftists. You see, their rejection of the left is inconsistent with them having goals that define leftism, stemming from a critique of more marginal aspects of leftism, thus they aren't moving out of the left. Rather, and this is the important part which they missed, they are arguably moving before the left. Anarchism isn't exactly a new ideology. It didn't spring into being when William Godwin or Josiah Warren or Pierre-Joseph Proudhon put it down on paper. Indeed, the anti-authoritarian spirit that defines anarchism has existed in all times and every revolution. This ground level anarchism far proceeds any form of leftism. Indeed, it could be said that leftism grew out of the anti-authoritarian radicalism of the French Revolution, thus making leftism the product of anarchism. In that sense, pre-left would be more accurate. In addition, while that contradiction exists, they do show an accurate understanding of certain strands of leftism, possibly even every strand of leftism but them, but does that mean that's what leftism is? In a way, yes, but, in many ways, not so much, so, in a way, partial-leftist is more accurate.

So they are post-left leftists, pre-leftists, and partial-leftists, while we are all that and post-post-leftists? Well, no. We are all of those, but none of those. Being post-left means having moved outside the left, so they aren't leftists. It's a new theory and mostly based on writers who came about after leftism, so pre-leftist is inaccurate. They may accept part of orthodox leftism, but that makes them no more partially a leftist than accepting anti-statism makes me partially a Tea Partier, so partial-leftist is inaccurate as well. Finally, post-post-leftism doesn't move beyond post-leftism entirely and still is within it, though within the left as well, forming a contradiction, so it isn't very "post" of post-leftism.

But how can we be all those but none of them? Because fuck you, that's why. More seriously, it's because we acknowledge our self-contradictions and don't fight them. All theories and ideologies are self-contradictory. By accepting the self-contradiction, we aren't contradicting ourselves, thus making us more consistent than others. (This contradicts the accepted self-contradiction creating an endless loop of consistency and contradiction.) We are ideologues against ideology, fighting it with our own ideology. We are organized against organizations, content within our organization of ourself, and only ourself. We fight and we wait. The revolution began yesterday and will begin when enough people join us. We are leftists outside the left who reside within the heart of leftism. We are post, post-post, pre, partial, anti, pro, wrong, revolutionary, reformist, and true leftists. We are all these and none of these.

Because fuck you.

Beginnings of a Comprehensive Economic Theory: Struggle as Fundamental

In my last post on building an economic theory, I came to the conclusion that the interactions of people are fundamental to the economy, not individuals themselves. However, are all interactions economic? Of course not. Economics, as a whole, tends to deal with a specific set of actions by people: First, production of goods and services. Second, hiring of workers. Third, the selling of these goods and services. Fourth, the purchase of goods and services. Fifth, the competition between different businesses.

These five actions boil down to three interactions. First, the interaction between the worker and the boss. Second, the interaction between the producer and the consumer. Third, the interaction between competing businesses. These all share one common characteristic: They are a struggle. In the first, the worker struggles for higher pay and less work while the boss struggles for lower pay and more production. In the second, the producer struggles to get more consumers to by more of their product for a higher price while the consumer struggles to buy what he/she will actually want for a lower price. In the third, both businesses struggle for more customers buying more of their stuff. Thus, it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that economics is the study of the struggles in production and distribution.

These three struggles are what are fundamental to the economy and, thus, must be fundamental to any analysis of the economy. All three of them have resources funnelled into them, be it through strikes, union dues, hiring pinkertons, creating anti-union propaganda, marketing to customers, shopping around, or negative ad campaigns. All of them take up time, labor, and resources that could be put into other things, thus all three of the struggles are inefficiencies.

The expression of the struggles can be found in three places: wages, prices, and relative prices among competitors. They show who is "winning" each of the struggles and by how much.

Beginnings of a Comprehensive Economic Theory: The Building Blocks of the Economy

What is the fundamental unit of the economy? Orthodox economic theory, in addition to many heterodox economic theories, accept the premise of classical and neo-classical economics in this aspect: the rational individual is the fundamental unit of the economy. But is it?

If it is, then there is no fundamental units of the economy. Why is that? Because people aren't rational, as a whole, especially not in any economic sense, which often includes pursuing their personal self-interest. People are influenced too much by morals, lack of information, friendship, hate, identity, and social prestige. People will cater to the whims of others rather than their self-interest, and often do so in irrational ways, such as praying for a hurt child instead of taking that child to the hospital or assassinating a famous musician to keep him "pure".

However, there are more problems with this concept of the rational individual being the fundamental building block of the economy. I mean, an individual who goes out into the wild and hunts for food in unclaimed territory is not a part of the economy. What is different about that person from a participant in the economy? Interactions with others.

Does that mean we should refine the fundamental of the economy to irrational individuals who interacts with others? No. No one interacts with others all the time, and it's only when they are interacting with others that they are participating in the economy. The fundamental unit of the economy should be the interactions with others themselves.

In my next post on building a comprehensive economic theory, I'll discuss what are the most important interactions with others and how to classify these interactions, especially the important ones.