What is Anarchism?

"But if all the wealth is the product of labor, then why does it not belong to labor?" -Alexander Berkman, What is Anarchism?

This week, I’m trying to understand anarchism. Here are my notes from Berkman’s book.

Is making a profit really stealing? What is a profit? According to Merriam-Webster, profit is defined as a valuable return, or a gain. In a market, this means selling a good for more than it cost to produce it. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. 

But how do we increase profits? We can increase the markup of the good, selling it for more of a margin than it cost to produce. This path is generally not attractive, because people will buy less of a good at a higher price. So what is the alternative? We can try to reduce factor costs. In macroeconomics, we learned that these include land, capital, enterprise, and labor. Land and capital are generally difficult to manipulate, since the markets land and capital are less exploitable. Labor, on the other hand, is relatively easy to change the cost of. A company can lower wages. Sure, employees will quit, but soon enough they will realize that they need to make money to survive and will return to jobs at lower wages. Perhaps money really is instrument of control in capitalism. We are forced to work because we need money to buy food and pay for a place to live. Without money, it is literally impossible for us to do these things.

Now that we have figured out that lowering wages will increase our profit, we have successfully increased profit. But wait… the value of labor has not got down. After all, the goods are still being sold for the same amount, or marginally less. The fact that lowering wages increases profits is one that should be disturbing. How can it be that workers are paid less than their labor is worth? This idea would not generally be accepted in other aspects of capitalism, or in other factor markets. We can’t just pay the farmer less for his wheat––he will provide less wheat according to the law of supply. 

But why are we able to extract value from labor so easily?

Welcome to The Blackboard

Why did I start this blog?

As of November, 2024, the U.S. has elected a federally convicted criminal as president for the next four years. Through Project 2025, the incoming president's administration has vowed to dismantle the institutions that are vital to secular democracy in the U.S. Something that I believe is incredibly important in resisting an administration and a government with fascist tendencies is writing. Freedom of the press has been a value of this country since its birth in the 18th century., thus a value that I hold true to is an independence of journalism and a freedom to express and develop ideas in public. 

This year, I've been reading Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher. In this book, Fisher argues that since the late 20th century, capitalism has extended itself beyond any previous bounds. It has become all-encompassing. He argues that today's young people are not able to imagine a viable alternative to capitalism, something that I find incredibly fascinating and real in my own life.

As a result of Mark Fisher's influence on me, I began reading his blog "K-Punk" and exploring the blog space of the early 2000s. In this exploration, I found an internet void of algorithms, ads, data brokerage, and dopamine. This lack of an ability to capitalize on a large scale form content produced on the early internet means that dissent from the system is more viable. The capitalist system of the internet in 2024 means that only what sells will be seen. In the early internet, there weren't as many ways to sell content, thus far the content was more freeform and separate from the general controls of a market.

I hope to use this blog as a breeding ground for ideas, a home for research, and a space for commentary. I hope to use it to share my influences and maybe discover new paths of learning to venture down.

Tonight, I will end with a quote from Capitalist Realism which many readers see as a call to action:

The long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.