anticlimacus wrote:The left libertarians, anarchists, hold the position that power ought to be decentralized.
Unfortunately, they are objectively wrong, because military reality requires unified control of power.
This goes both for social organization and for the workplace. Part of that decentralization is the socialization of the means of production so that all share in ownership of capital.
In reality, this means theft of capital from those who produce it.
Democratizing ownership of capital (which is socially produced in the first place
No. In point of objective physical fact, capital is
not socially produced. That's just an absurd Marxist fabrication. Capital is a product of individual contributions of initiative, labor, and capital goods. Each capital good is produced exactly by those who contribute to its production, and no one else.
and therefore should be socially owned)
I have just proved it should
not be socially owned. It is produced by the contributions of particular individuals -- especially the entrepreneur who initiates its production and typically contributes his own capital thereto -- and they are the ones who rightly own it.
and democratizing the workplace in no way necessitates "group authority" or "commissars" as you have erroneously suggested.
There is no other way democracy can work.
It's a cooperative system which allows individuals to equally share in public life and to realize their own individual potential.
If you had any experience in either business or politics, you would know that few people have either the ability or the inclination to share in public life or the management of their workplaces.
From my perspective a federated system of syndicates within a market socialism is actually a realistic form of libertarianism that would do best in ensuring autonomy and self-determination (combining David Schweickart's "economic democracy" and Rudolph Rocker's "anarcho-syndicalism").
You are entitled to your incorrect opinion.
When you have no say over production and over your working life, you are controlled and your autonomy is greatly diminished. I don't see how "geolibertarianism" overcomes this.
Unlike either the feudal "libertarian" model of Rothbard and the Randroids or the collectivist -- i.e., anti-individual -- "libertarianism" of the socialists and anarchists, the geolibertarian model
actually restores the individual right to liberty.
In the geolibertarian system, each individual DOES have full control over not only his own contributions to production and his working life but all of his relations to the economy and society. This is only possible in the geolibertarian system because only there does everyone have free, secure access to enough of the available advantageous natural resources to earn a living with (typically a place to live that has easy access to his preferred employment opportunities, but it could be a piece of farmland, a stretch of forest, etc.), and as much more as he is willing and able to compensate the community for depriving everyone else of. He need not ask permission of any commissars or fellow workers to use it as he wishes, or consult his Labor Committee, or anyone else. The decision of what resources to use and how to use them are his alone. Each individual has complete control and autonomy in his own life, until and unless he decides it is more advantageous to work for someone smarter than he is, who can make his labor more productive, enjoyable and rewarding.
Each individual's right to property in the fruits of his labor, and in what he produces by his contributions of initiative and capital, is secure. Everyone gets exactly the full, equal liberty they have a right to, no more and no less, and everyone gets exactly the share of production they have earned by their contributions to production -- and that means even those who cannot labor get a share, because they have contributed their abstention from exercising their liberty to use the resources the more productive are paying to use.