Republished without permission. Originally by Ancap Society
A common statist fallacy is it has ergo it must, or has it been therefore it can be. In asserting that an anarchist society has never occurred to a monumental degree is in their eyes, a death-blow to the advocation of anarchist society writ-large, it is a total and complete refutation. Though this sentiment & barometer of evidence stands as faulty for a few obvious reasons.
Firstly, human association is just that mode of interconnected operation which makes society occur. Thus, the behaviors of humans in interaction shape the society therein. It is therefore a misnomer to call any society apodictically statist (society based on compulsory monopoly) or market-based (voluntary association, based on private property social order). Nominally society will experience some degree of both given humans are hyper individual creatures with a bounty of opportunity afoot; both modes exist, thus both can become predominant. This is the basis of social-order, conflict versus cooperation. Naturally deficits or scarcity if that which is sought after is the causal mechanism for either to occur, this we can rationally assume that some amount of either will have a tendency to emerge in systems of interaction. In many an opus this is why I refer to nations or regions as having a mixed economic order, some having more pronounced lopsidedness than others; it is for this reason neoclassical began using the phrase mixed-economy, a term which as of late has lost popularity as absolutes are more revealing on grand international stages.
A good example of this rational dilemma is that of North Korea, now most would assert that North Korea is a planned economic order, and they are not particularly incorrect in asserting such. Though North Korea for some three decades now has bolstered a subversive and ever-growing market economy known as the Korean gray market. This has been due to the many failings of the regime & the emergent nature I human interests of course. Ergo, it is correct to say that the command order is one set of events & the marker order is a separate set of events. One social order facilitating one end & another process facilitating the other.
Now it is completely fair academically to call a spade a spade, North Korea as a nation state region imposes many unilateral edicts, or laws, which perverse, distort and in many cases make impossible the markets required social-order. Though it would be foolish to not make the essential distinction between what constitutes market forces versus what constitutes state forces and there overarching process. One merely dominates the state of affairs in spite of the other. Many places have gray markets, black markets or what has become known as, the, “informal economy”.
Ergo, when one asks for proof of anarchism at work, one should not point or care to point to a region. Rather one should point to an activity. For example, my purchase of groceries between myself and the vendor of groceries is a market relationship, an exchange based on private property ex ante expectations. The tax imposed on the sale of goods is a separate unilateral relationship imposed by another social order of operations known as public property social order. One must admit that the market is its own thing by virtue if it’s process of interaction and thus does not rely on a state nor beget a state in its process.
The markets means & ends are emergent by self-interest and coordinated by the price system at large where it is necessary. The state is an attempted monopolistic entity which imposes edicts super-normally; by super-normal I intend to say with support of an entity unlike the mafia, but with the delusion of a necessary mafia acting essentially like the mafia.