http://i.imgur.com/MCQtjnx.jpg I have seen this image, check the link, circulated and sometimes posted onto the /r/Anarchism subredit. It is posted by An-Caps who believe that this is proof that Left-Anarchists are statists. It is a misrepresentation of the left-Anarchist position. I would like to take a moment to actually explain the left anarchist position such that next time you atack us you won't just be attacking a straw man. This is a long post but try to read through it completly.

We believe that the economic nature of the employer-employee relationship is NOT symbiotic or mutually beneficial but is rather deeply antagonistic. Shrinking the state, abolishing the state, growing the state, or creating a totalitarian state is not going to do anything to change this. We don't believe that any form of state or regulation can make the employer-employee relationship symbiotic. Neither do we believe that abolishing the state will make this relationship symbiotic. You An Caps argue that in the absence of government interference free trade between consenting adults will lead to maximum prosperity for all. You accuse of wishing to regulate the free market. Lets make something completely clear: we do not oppose the free market, we just don't believe it is a coherent concept to begin with. When you say that we hate the free market, that's like how religious people say that Atheists "hate god." But Atheists don't "hate" god they simply don't believe that God exists. To hate something is to say that you think it is real and negative. Atheists dont disaprove of God's actions or wish to destroy God because they think God is imaginary. And similarly, we Left-Anarchists do not disprove of the Free Market, we do not hate the Free Market, we do not wish to regulate or destroy the Free Market, because we believe that "the Free Market" is a meaningless concept to begin with.

The idea of the Free Market supposes that the relationship between employer and employee can be mutually beneficial where as we beleive that the nature of the relationship even if it was agreed to voluntarily is inherently antagonistic. The relationship between two partners in businesses can symbiotic, the relationship between co-equal owners of a company can be symbiotic, but not that of the owner and the worker. Because the owner can always fire the worker, the workers salaries are a cost from the owners perspective. The more freedom a worker has as to where they work the less freedom an owner has as to who they get to work for them and vice versa. It is irelevant as to weather or not an employment contract was signed voluntarily because the interests of the employee are opposed to those of the employer. Even if a worker thinks their boss is a great person and that the two of them can work together for mutual benifit, their competing economic interests are always bubbling under the surface.

What is the NAP? It is a truce. It is the statement that we will all live in peice and enjoy unregulated consensual trade. As a Left Anarchist myself I will say that this is a step in the correct direction. but you ancaps assume that unregulated consensual trade = mutually beneficial trade. This is your false assumption. You do not solve the problem of owner-worker antagonisms, you just bury them. Now perhaps you say that it doesnt matter. You beleive that we don't all have to like each other we just have to agree to be nonviolent and respect consensual agreements between adults. You don't care if a worker likes his or her boss or if a worker thinks that his or her boss is fair or competent, these are personal problems for the worker to sort out, all that matters to you is that all trades are voluntary and not interfered with by authoritarian third parties.

What we Left Anarchists believe is that all the antagonisms in society will biol over. It doesnt change anything that that the emplyment contracts were signed voluntarily, the antagonism will lead to a confrontation. There is a famous saying "a house divided against itself cannot stand." The young workers will eventually realize that it would be in their self intrest to push the older management out of power and run the company themselves. So they will strike, they will sit in, they will ocupy the company property until the management caves to their demands. Then the management will declare that this is a violation of their private property rights and try to have the workers evicted. Things will become violent they will escalate. It is in such a situation that we Left Anarchists will come in and assist the workers against the police, or in the case of an AnCap society, against the private security firm paid by the company owner to clear out the striking workers such that productivity can resume.

So it is simply false to accuse us of wishing to regulate consensual agreements. That is not our position. We dont desire to regulate any consensual agreements. All consensual agreements are fine by us. When the workers end up in a stand off with their boss, and it will happen inevitably, then we will come into support the workers. That is all. We do not regulate the workplace, we come in and support insurrection in the work place. If the workers have no spirit to strike no willingness to fight with their boss, then there is nothing for us to do. you can acuse us of not respecting property rights. You can acuse us of condoning aggression against property in the context of a workers strike. But you can not accuse us of regulating consensual contracts. We do not stop people from entering into employment contracts, we offer assistance to people who have decided to strike against the terms of those contracts. Our end goal is to see a world in which every workers is an equal part owner of the company they work for such that no owner-worker antagonism persists. It would be contradictory to attempt this through regulating the economy because that would place us in a position of power over both owners and workers which is not what we want. We will acomplish this through one workers strike at atime reforming the structure of each company from within. And if the workers never feel the nead to strike... then we will have nothing to do.