> Again, no. Capitalism has to be preserved by a powerful state able to enclose land and protect property through the state apparatus.

For capitalism to stabilize into something durable and predictable, and therefore to scale, what you're saying is true.

But this does no violence to my original point which is that capitalism will form organically. You can see the types of examples I outlined in places lacking an effective state apparatus. Consider Somalia. Or the American frontier (in particular Deadwood style illegal settlements in Indian territory).

Again, without an effective state to nurture and preserve it, capitalism is unstable and unlikely to scale. But it will occur organically. That's all I'm saying.

> Capital is a very complex concept, but it can be easily understood as private property which exists only for the purpose of producing more capital. So, a ranch is a capitalist ranch if it's someone's private property. If there's an employer and employees (which only exist under capitalism, as lords and serfs only do under feudalism). If the employee produces someone else's property through their labor which is sold as capital for the sake of capital accumulation.

All of this happens at a limited scale in the absence of an effective state. It will occur spontaneously, because that's what happens when people want to buy and sell things, and hire and work for wages. It just happens. It's been happening for thousands of years.

Brutal inter-species dominance hierarchies pervade the natural world. E.g., the food chain. And brutal intra-species competition for resources and mates determines who eats, and who fucks.

The fact that I happen to be a human at the top of the food chain just makes me an exception that proves the rule. I dominate most of the rest of the natural world.

But even I don't dominate all of it. Bacteria are constantly attempting to dominate me and my fellow humans. And sometimes they win.

The author said that an anarchism without domination is natural. It is not.

> I do not think capitalism is predetermined by the existence of markets.

But according to your definition of capitalism (which is owning things you don't use to produce an income for yourself) the moment someone's ranch, farm, plantation, or vineyard produces more meat, wheat, spice, cotton, or grapes than the owner uses, and he sells them for income, capitalism emerges. In what world is that not virtually guaranteed to happen for somebody?

And then, if in addition to simply producing goods out of the earth, some enterprising people see an opportunity to build something people will pay to use (like an inn or a stable), will they not build it if they have the means and incentive? Will someone not build a boat to ferry people across a river, for a fee? Will someone not build a carriage to pull with a horse to transport goods for a fee? Is it not virtually guaranteed all of this will organically happen for somebody because people need/want all of it to happen?

> Yes, some forms of authority are going to exist, but that isn't contradictory to anarchism. Just like authoritarianism doesn't mean pure 100% control over the oppressed (which is impossible), it's opposite is not 100% pure freedom from control.

OK, but to all the owners of goods/service producing farms, ranches, plantations, vineyards, inns, stables, ferry or delivery services, what you think of as "minimizing hierarchy and control" is going to look like some pretty strict control. Basically, you want to make all of that illegal, and you stand ready to deploy state violence to ensure none of it is allowed.

> one towards greater control over others and the other towards lesser control over others.

It sounds to me like you're all for greater control over others as long as "others" are people who create things people want to pay for. And you need a strong state to ensure that this control is effective.

But your state is going to need to be even stronger than that. Not only is it going to have to enforce these prohibitions on capitalism, now without anybody else to do them, the state is going to have to provide all of these goods and services itself. And a state that powerful is going to need a well defined command and control hierarchy if it's going to work at all. And now you've just brought the Soviet Union back online.

This isn't anarchism at all.

What am I missing?

Ok. Saying nature is nothing BUT strength dominating weakness is slightly hyperbolic. But only slightly. My retort to the author survives.

No, I’ve just seen nature shows.

But let's just be clear, you do endorse the existence of a regime sufficiently dominant to forcefully prevent the establishment of an inn? And therefore you reject the author's call for an "anarchy" that precludes dominance? Furthermore you agree with my original claim that...

> If we allow people to engage in voluntary market exchange, something looking like capitalism will organically emerge. It takes authoritarianism to disrupt that. You have to use force to stop it, or to rearrange it.

...and you believe that this is a good thing?

OK. I get your definition of private property.

I originally said:

> If we allow people to engage in voluntary market exchange, something looking like capitalism will organically emerge. It takes authoritarianism to disrupt that. You have to use force to stop it, or to rearrange it.

And I'll add to that, something like capitalism and private property (according to your definition) will organically emerge.

It will emerge the moment someone notices that foreign visitors to a particular town would like a place to bathe, eat, and sleep for the night, and that they don't want to buy a home. That someone will buy a or build a structure of some sort and charge people to stay there for the night, and he will call it an inn. At that moment, private property has organically come online. He has created capital that he uses to generate income for himself.

And the only way it doesn't come online is if you establish an authoritarian enforcement regime to tell the would-be capitalist that, "You are allowed to build or buy a structure for your own use, and you can sell it to someone else so they can use it, but you can't charge someone to use it temporarily. It doesn't matter if there are visitors to this town pleading for someone to build an inn so they have a place to sleep for the night. You are not allowed to do that, and if you try, we will use force to stop you."

That's how it has to go. If you're for it, and you believe this enforcement regime makes for a better world, fine. Just argue for that. But it does involve dominance. It does involve the threat of force.

The author argues that anarchy is the absence of dominance. But this is not the absence of dominance.

To me private property means that when I give you A and you give me B, you are entitled to keep A, I am entitled to keep B, and society recognizes those entitlements and stands ready to use force to repel anybody who attempts to initiate force to seize A from you or B from me. How does market exchange work without that?

If we allow people to engage in voluntary market exchange, something looking like capitalism will organically emerge. It takes authoritarianism to disrupt that. You have to use force to stop it, or to rearrange it.

And according to the author’s definition of anarchy as the absence of domination. But nature is nothing BUT domination—strength having its way with weakness. This article is a synthesis of delusion and word salad.