Centralization Inc.

I think it's safe to say that we don't like centralization. Especially when it comes to decision-making, policies and strategy our innate sense of justice and fairness steers us towards decentralized systems; it's why we prefer democracy over dictatorship.

And that's why libertarianism and anarchism originated as left wing, progressive ideologies. This is something modern capitalist libertarians and anarcho-capitalists refuse to understand, which is quite astonishing in my opinion. Simply looking at history, it's clear that we've evolved from highly centralized to ever more decentralized systems of governance. Kings, tzars, emperors, they're a thing of the past. The divide between the political left and right was made quite literally during the French Revolution; supporters of the king sat to the right of the president of the National Assembly and supporters of the revolution sat to his left. This alone should be enough for anyone to understand that it's leftists and progressives who lead the way towards decentralization of power.

The widespread belief that leftists want more power for the government, and right-wingers want less power for the government, can therefore only be understood by reckoning with the incessant propaganda campaigns against socialism, communism and progressivism. Richard Wolff said it best: "Socialism is 'when the government does stuff', and when the government does a whole lot of stuff, it's communism." As stupid as it is, this is what most people, especially on the political right, believe. This belief betrays a deep-seeded and widespread misunderstanding of what socialism and communism even are. It may be helpful at this point to remind ourselves that communism is an ideology where The State does not exist; people tend to conveniently forget that most important aspect when pointing at all the failed non-communist (actually state-capitalist) experiments of the past, the U.S.S.R. in particular.

Not only The State, but money as well is abolished in the communist ideal. Money is intimately linked to capitalism, because it's the tool we use to assign value and the stuff we trade for goods and services. In capitalism the means of production are in private hands, and together with its profit-motive capitalism can only lead to centralization of money and wealth. I really don't know why, with more than two millennia of written history, proponents of capitalism are still able to fool themselves into believing that this is not the case. They seem to refuse to understand that ownership equals power. If I own something, say a piece of land, I have the final say over that thing. The more I own, the more say I have. We really don't have to make it more complicated than that basic understanding of the relationship between ownership and power. Democracy never had a real chance under capitalism, as capitalism at its root is anti-democratic and we've always prioritized the economy over politics.

It's therefore important to understand that if leftists and progressives want more government intervention, it's always to combat the centralization of power inherent to the capitalist ideology and otherwise. Capitalism concentrates wealth and power into a few hands, forcing leftist political forces to redistribute that wealth and power. Capitalism leads to monopolies and oligopolies, necessitating the government to enforce antitrust laws. Ultimately though, true leftists aim for a more radical change; the abolition of capitalism in favor of a system that doesn't allow for the concentration of wealth and power in the first place.

It can not be stressed enough how deeply mistaken the right-libertarian and anarcho-capitalist notion of capitalism without government is. It's delusional and dangerous. If you understand even a little bit what's explained above, you know why: government will simply be replaced by capitalists who aren't accountable to anyone but themselves. The monopoly on the use of force would be transferred to the Amazons and Googles of this world. However shitty our governments are, they're the only weapon we have against the absolute power that comes with the ownership of the means of production. And besides, this monopoly on use of force is essential for capitalism to even work because government's primary objective is to protect private property; that's why right-libertarians want the government reduced to only that function, and protecting the borders. That's why they don't mind increases to the military budget and the police, or tax cuts for the rich when they whine about "small government".

Today I've included two videos, both dealing with the consequences of our refusal to understand capitalism for what it really is. One is about monopolies and oligopolies, and one is about the plutocracy that our democracy really is under capitalism. The solution is not just simple, it's very simple; we just need to extend our understanding of democracy into our economy. We need the means of production to be governed democratically. It's that simple, and it's what socialism is at its core. We need our factories to not be the dictatorships that they are now, we need them to be democratically governed by the people who work there and have to live with the consequences of the decisions made with regards to profits, waste disposal, hiring and firing, relocation and so on. That way the leaders will never make hundreds or thousands of times more money than the workers. That way poison won't be dumped in the rivers and on the grounds where the employees' children play. That way jobs won't be relocated to low wage countries without environmental or labor regulations. It's not that hard, really.

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