2.2 What VoTa Opposes

This section is by no means a complete list of what VoTa opposes. It discusses selected positions and practices that are controversial or are associated, rightly or wrongly, with capitalism or socialism. These associations can obscure where VoTa stands, making it useful to explain its position on each topic and the reasons behind it.

Imperialism and colonialism

Some people on the left criticise capitalism for being associated with, or exacerbating, imperialism and colonialism. Some claim capitalism promoted or grew out of the exploitation of foreign nations or people.

VoTa opposes imperialism and colonial domination because they violate the property rights of the people subjected to them. These rights are protected equally for all people. VoTa stands for free markets and voluntary exchanges rather than coercion or domination.

Slavery

VoTa opposes slavery as a violation of a person's rights over their own body and liberty.

Historical economies commonly described as capitalist included slavery, and acknowledging this does not require defending or minimising it. But that history does not establish an argument against free markets based on voluntary exchange and equal protection of individual rights.

Capitalism is commonly defined as involving property rights (in particular, the private ownership of the means of production) and voluntary exchange. Slavery is involuntary and represents the exact opposite. The critics who associate capitalism with slavery in order to criticise it are presenting a strawman. Of course, this is a matter of how the word capitalism is defined, but not agreeing on definitions doesn't help resolve differences of opinion.

In a Majority Report interview with historian Caitlin Rosenthal, Sam Seder connects plantation slavery to contemporary business practices. Describing slavery as part of a continuing tradition, he says:

So the shocking part is there's some type of presumption that exists among some people that slavery was somehow, I guess, an aberration in some way, and it was a function of the people who would have slaves were not business people, there was something anomalous about it, but in fact it's really part of a tradition and almost in some respects sort of seamlessly slides into an era where people aren't slaves. Right? How much of our business practices that we have today in terms of management techniques and control of workers is, if not a descendant of those practices, but at the very least looks very similar to those practices?

Similarly, in his interview with Clara Mattei, David McNally in effect claims capitalism encompasses slavery:

I'm challenging the myth that throughout the Caribbean, throughout Brazil, and the southern United States, there was a system called slavery, and later it got replaced by capitalism, and I'm saying no, that's not how the story works. The reality is, that the slave plantations of the Atlantic world were among the most prosperous and profitable business enterprises in the world. Hundreds of enslaved people, the vast majority in the first 100 years kidnapped from Africa, and sold into bondage, produced global commodities: sugar, coffee, cotton, tobacco, indigo, and more, and all of the wealth flowed into the hands of the owning class, and then through their hands big chunks flowed back to Europe, and fueled things like the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe. And when you tell the story truthfully, it says to us, capitalism always involves different forms of coercion. The most blatant and the most brutal is childhood slavery.

It is also argued that slavery provided an enormous economic advantage to the slave owners, even to the point of suggesting that modern capitalism would never have developed the way it has without slavery. That counterfactual cannot be established merely by showing that slave owners profited from slavery.

A relevant question is how slavery came to an end. In his interview with Clara Mattei, David McNally emphasises the role of enslaved people in bringing about their own emancipation:

They were producing the wealth of their masters. Now think about that for a minute. because if you produce wealth for others, you have an often unseen power, and that's the power to stop working for them. That's the power to withdraw your labor. And contrary to what so many of the older histories thought, enslaved people withdrew their labor all the time. One of the great revelations in this regard is to read the actual diaries that the master class kept. They are constantly complaining about the enslaved people slowing down in the fields, about a bunch of them running off to the forest, and so on. They were engaged in a constant battle, and at the heart of that battle, of every freedom struggle, by enslaved people and by oppressed people is to reclaim time for themselves. Because the claim of power over you by any oppressing class, is the claim to be able to control your time, to own your time. Enslaved people regularly fought and organised for fewer hours per day in the field, for more days away from the field.

He goes on to say:

Lincoln was driven forward to take actions he had opposed because enslaved people were freeing themselves.

His argument is that resistance and self-emancipation forced political action, rather than freedom simply being bestowed by political leaders on moral grounds. He cited economic reasons, such as slaves going on strike or tending to have low output, and costs such as those of feeding them or those arising from frequent escapes. Slaveholders must therefore devote resources to supervision and coercion, and such costs erode the apparent advantage of labour obtained without paying wages.

Ludwig von Mises developed an economic argument against slavery in Human Action, chapter XXI, section 9, under “The Work of Animals and of Slaves”. He argued that coercion could not elicit the diligence, skill, and initiative encouraged by working for one's own benefit. Even slaveholders seeking better performance had to offer incentives beyond the threat of punishment. In his account, enterprises using slave labour could not withstand unrestricted competition from those employing free workers. He attributed slavery's persistence to institutions that sheltered it from that competition: in the plantation colonies, high immigration costs and inadequate legal protection against officials and planters obstructed the growth of a free workforce and independent farming; in Eastern Europe, caste restrictions reserved large-scale agriculture for the nobility. Mises therefore did not claim that market forces alone had abolished these protected systems. He expressly credited political action inspired by laissez-faire ideas with abolishing slavery and serfdom. His argument presents free labour and voluntary exchange as forces undermining bondage, giving reason to distinguish them from the coercive practices associated with capitalism.

Fascism and authoritarianism

Some people on the left use the term "fascist" to refer to people they regard as authoritarian and against socialism. The term fascism is associated with ultranationalism and authoritarianism. VoTa opposes ultranationalism when it would violate the property rights of foreign people. It also strongly opposes authoritarianism.

Cronyism and political privilege

The left often blame cronyism on corporations, and the right tend to blame it on government. Both are correct. It is a systemic issue that inevitably arises when government has discretionary powers to grant privileges, leading bad actors in industry to lobby government for special privileges. VoTa opposes political government, not because it regards government as the main bad actor, but simply because removing it leads to a better outcome: cronyism is eliminated, and there is more democracy.

State ownership of the means of production

VoTa opposes state ownership of the means of production. The factors of production need to be privately owned in order to be traded. They need to be traded in order to have market prices. They need prices in order for producers to allocate resources efficiently.

Restrictions on worker unions

Some critics on the left associate the right's defence of free markets with opposition to worker unions. Yet support for freedom of association and voluntary organisation also supports workers' right to unionise. VoTa recognises workers' freedom to form and join unions, bargain collectively, and coordinate their bargaining power. Employers' preference for negotiating with workers individually does not override workers' freedom to organise.

Curtailing democracy and effective disenfranchisement

Some people on the right believe that democracy works against free markets, presumably because the majority of people are poor and tend to prefer bigger government that taxes the rich heavily and provides better social programs like welfare and free healthcare. VoTa opposes the view that democracy is something that should be curtailed, including through representative institutions that leave most people with little effective influence over the decisions made in their name.

Discussing the United States in a 2013 interview, Noam Chomsky described this exclusion from effective political influence:

“The lower 70 percent of wealth and income — their attitudes have no influence on policy.”

— Noam Chomsky, interview with Edward Radzivilovskiy, 27 February 2013.

Chomsky's claim concerns effective disenfranchisement: people retain the legal right to vote, yet their preferences have little independent influence on public policy. His approximate 70 percent figure summarises his reading of research by Martin Gilens, Larry Bartels, and others; it is not a count of people legally excluded from elections. He attributes the gap between voting rights and political influence in part to representatives' dependence on wealthy campaign donors. Citizens can choose candidates while the officials elected remain more responsive to those who finance their campaigns.

The distinction between agreement and influence is essential to understanding the research. In Gilens's explanation of his findings, the stark inequality appears when affluent Americans prefer different policies from those preferred by middle- and low-income Americans. In those cases, he finds substantial policy responsiveness to the affluent and essentially none to the less affluent. This does not mean that ordinary citizens never obtain policies they favour: different income groups often agree. It means that agreement with an outcome does not establish that their preferences helped determine it. These findings concern the United States and do not establish that every representative system necessarily produces the same degree of exclusion.

VoTa opposes treating the periodic selection of representatives as sufficient democratic control. Its response is to give citizens direct authority over permissible laws and services, and taxpayers direct control over their tax allocations. It has no political government or governing political parties, and services are supplied by competing private providers rather than a state-owned public sector. Citizens need not persuade elected officeholders to turn their preferences into decisions. This removes the intermediary through which campaign donors can obtain privileged access to political decision-making, although it does not imply that wealth can have no influence on public debate.

VoTa is in favour of radically more democracy, not less. Democracy is seen as key to a fair, just and equitable society. VoTa uses an extreme form of direct democracy to allow the people to define laws and services.