A lot. Markets soon result in what are termed "market forces," "impersonal" forces which ensure that the people in the economy do what is required of them in order for the economy to function. The market system, in capitalist apologetics, is presented to appear as a regime of freedom where no one forces anyone to do anything, where we "freely" exchange with others as we see fit. However, the facts of the matter are somewhat different, since the market often ensures that people act in ways opposite to what they desire or forces them to accept "free agreements" which they may not actually desire. Wage labour is the most obvious example of this, for, as we indicated in section B.4, most people have little option but to agree to work for others.

We must stress here that not all anarchists are opposed to the market. Individualist anarchists favour it while Proudhon wanted to modify it while retaining competition. For many, the market equals capitalism. However, this is not the case as it ignores the fundamental issue of (economic) class, namely who owns the means of production. Capitalism is unique in that it is based on wage labour, i.e. a market for labour as workers do not own their own means of production and have to sell themselves to those who do. Thus it is entirely possible for a market to exist within a society and for that society not to be capitalist. For example, a society of independent artisans and peasants selling their product on the market would not be capitalist as workers would own and control their means of production and so wage labour (and so capitalism) would not exist. Similarly, Proudhon's competitive system of self-managed co-operatives and mutual banks would be non-capitalist (and socialist) for the same reason. Anarchists object to capitalism due to the quality of the social relationships it generates between people (i.e. it generates authoritarian ones). If these relationships are eliminated then the kinds of ownership which do so are anarchistic. Thus the issue of ownership matters only in-so-far it generates relationships of the desired kind (i.e. those based on liberty, equality and solidarity). To concentrate purely on "markets" or "property" means to ignore social relationships and the key aspect of capitalism, namely wage labour. That right-wingers do this is understandable (to hide the authoritarian core of capitalism) but why (libertarian or other) socialists should do so is less clear.

In this section of the FAQ we discuss anarchist objections to the market as such rather than the capitalist market. The workings of the market do have problems with them which are independent of, or made worse by, the existence of wage-labour. It is these problems which make most anarchists hostile to the market and so desire a communist-anarchist society.

So, even if we assume a mutualist or market-socialist system of competing self-managed workplaces, it's clear that market forces would soon result in many irrationalities occurring. Most obviously, operating in a market means submitting to the profit criterion. This means that however much workers might want to employ social criteria, they cannot. To ignore profitability would cause their firm to go bankrupt. Markets therefore create conditions that compel workers and consumers to decide things which are not be in their interest, for example introducing deskilling or polluting technology, longer hours, and so on. We could also point to the numerous industrial deaths and accidents which are due to market forces making it unprofitable to introduce adequate safety equipment or working conditions, (conservative estimates for industrial deaths in the USA are between 14 000 and 25 000 per year plus over 2 million disabled), or to increased pollution and stress levels which shorten life spans.

In addition, a market-based system can result in what we have termed "the ethics of mathematics," where things (particularly money) become more important than people. This can have a de-humanising effect, with people becoming cold-hearted calculators who put profits before people. This can be seen in capitalism, where economic decisions are far more important than ethical ones. And such an inhuman mentality can be rewarded on the market. Merit does not "necessarily" breed success, and the successful do not "necessarily" have merit. The truth is that, in the words of Noam Chomsky, "wealth and power tend to accrue to those who are ruthless, cunning, avaricious, self-seeking, lacking in sympathy and compassion, subservient to authority and willing to abandon principle for material gain, and so on. . . Such qualities might be just the valuable ones for a war of all against all." [For Reasons of State, pp. 139-140] Thorstein Veblen elaborated at length on this theme in The Leisure Class, a classic analysis of capitalist psychology. Needless to be said, if the market does reward such people with success it can hardly be considered as a good thing. A system which elevates making money to the position of the most important individual activity will obviously result in the degrading of human values and an increase in neurotic and psychotic behaviour.

Little wonder, as Alfie Kohn has argued, competition can have serious negative effects on us outside of work, with it damaging both our personal psychology and our interpersonal relationships (see his excellent book No Contest for details). The market can impoverish us as individuals, sabotaging self-esteem, promoting conformity, ruining relationships and making use less than what we could be. This is a problem of markets as such, not only capitalist ones.

Any market system is also marked by a continuing need to expand production and consumption. This means that market forces ensure that work continually has to expand, causing potentially destructive results for both people and the planet. Competition ensures that we can never take it easy, for as Max Stirner argued, "[r]estless acquisition does not let us take breath, take a calm enjoyment. We do not get the comfort of our possessions. . . Hence it is at any rate helpful that we come to an agreement about human labours that they may not, as under competition, claim all our time and toil." [The Ego and Its Own, p. 268]

Value needs to be created, and that can only be done by labour. It is ironic that supporters of capitalism, while usually saying that "work" is and always will be hell, support an economic system which must continually expand that "work" (i.e. labour) while deskilling and automating it and those who do it. Anarchists, in contrast, argue that work need not be hell, and indeed, that when enriched by skills and self-management, can be enjoyable. We go further and argue that work need not take all our time and that labour (i.e. unwanted and boring work) can and must be minimised. Hence, while the "anti-work" capitalist submits humanity to more and more labour, the anarchist desires the liberation of "work" and the end of "labour" as a way of life.

In addition, market decisions are crucially conditioned by the purchasing power of those income groups that can back their demands with money. The market is a continuous bidding for goods, resources, and services, with those who have the most purchasing power the winners. This means that the market system is the worst one for allocating resources when purchasing power is unequally distributed. This is why orthodox economists make the convenient assumption of a "given distribution of income" when they try to show that a market-based allocation of resources is the best one (for example, "Pareto optimality"). While a mutualist system should reduce inequality drastically, it cannot be assumed that inequalities will not increase over time. This is because inequalities in resources leads to inequalities of power on the market. Any trade or contract will benefit the powerful more than the powerless, so re-enforcing and potentially increasing the inequalities and power between the parties. This could, over time, lead to a return to capitalism (as Proudhon himself noted, the "original equality [between contractor and workmen] was bound to disappear through the advantageous position of the master and the dependence of the wage-workers." [System of Economical Contradictions, p. 201]).

With the means of life monopolised by one class, the effects of market forces and unequal purchasing power can be terrible. As Allan Engler points out, "[w]hen people are denied access to the means of livelihood, the invisible hand of market forces does not intervene on their behalf. Equilibrium between supply and demand has no necessary connection with human need. For example, assume a country of one million people in which 900,000 are without means of livelihood. One million bushels of wheat are produced. The entire crop is sold to 100,000 people at $10 a bushel. Supply and demand are in equilibrium, yet 900 000 people will face starvation." [Apostles of Greed, pp. 50-51] In case anyone thinks that this just happens in theory, the example of African countries hit by famine gives a classic example of this occurring in practice. There, rich landowners grow cash crops and export food to the developed nations while millions starve in their own.

Lastly, there are the distributional consequences of the market system. As markets inform by 'exit' only — some products find a market, others do not — 'voice' is absent. The operation of 'exit' rather than 'voice' leaves behind those without power in the marketplace. For example, the wealthy do not buy food poisoned with additives, the poor consume it. This means a division grows between two environments: one inhabited by those with wealth and one inhabited by those without it. As can be seen from the current capitalist practice of "exporting pollution" to developing countries, this problem can have serious ecological and social effects. So, far from the market being a "democracy" based on "one dollar, one vote," it is an oligarchy in which, for example, the "79 000 Americans who earned the minimum wage in 1987 have the same influence [or "vote"] as Michael Milken, who 'earned' as much as all of them combined." [Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, The Political Economy of Participatory Economics, p. 21]

In other words, markets are always biased in favour of effective demand, i.e. in favour of the demands of people with money. A market may be Pareto-optimal, but it can never (except in the imaginary abstractions of mathematical welfare economics) allocate the necessities of life to those who need them the most.

In addition, markets never internalise external costs. Two people (or companies) who strike a market-rational bargain between themselves need not consider the consequences of their bargain for other people outside their bargain, nor the consequences for the earth. Thus market exchanges are never bilateral agreements as their effects impact on the wider society (in terms of, say, pollution, inequality and so on). The market also ignores the needs of future generations as they always discount the value of the long term future. A payment to be made 1 000 years from now (a mere speck in geological time) has a market value of virtually zero according to any commonly used discount rate. Even 50 years in the future cannot be adequately considered as competitive pressures force a short term perspective on people harmful to present and future generations, plus the ecology of the planet.

Also, markets do not reflect the values of things we do not put a price upon (as we argued in section B.5). It cannot protect wilderness, for example, simply because it requires people to turn it into property and sell it as a commodity. If you cannot afford to visit the new commodity, the market turns it into something else, no matter how much you value it. This ensures that the market cannot really provide the information necessary for rational-decision making and so resources are inefficiently allocated and we all suffer from the consequences of that.

Thus are plenty of reasons for concluding that efficiency and the market not only do not necessarily coincide, but, indeed, necessarily do not coincide. Indeed, rather than respond to individual needs, the market responds to money (more correctly, profit), which by its very nature provides a distorted indication of individual preferences (and does not take into account values which are enjoyed collectively, such as clean air, or potentially enjoyed, such as the wilderness a person may never visit but desires to see exist and protected).

So, for all its talk of "invisible hands" and "individual freedom," capitalism ignores the actual living individual in the economy and society. The "individual rights" on which capitalists' base their "free" system are said to be "man's rights," on what "man needs." But "man," after all, is only an abstraction, not a real living being. By talking about "man" and basing "rights" on what this abstraction is said to need, capitalism and statism ignore the uniqueness of each person and the conditions required to develop that uniqueness. As Max Stirner pointed out, "[h]e who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation exists, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook." [The Ego and Its Own, p. 79] And like all spooks, it requires sacrifice — the sacrifice of individuality to hierarchy and authority.

This anti-individual biases in capitalism can be seen by its top-down nature and the newspeak used to disguise its reality. For example, there is what is called "increasing flexibility of the labour market." "Flexibility" sounds great: rigid structures are unappealing and hardly suitable for human growth. In reality, as Noam Chomsky points out "[f]lexibility means insecurity. It means you go to bed at night and don't know if you have a job tomorrow morning. That's called flexibility of the labour market, and any economist can explain that's a good thing for the economy, where by 'the economy' now we understand profit-making. We don't mean by 'the economy' the way people live. That's good for the economy, and temporary jobs increase flexibility. Low wages also increase job insecurity. They keep inflation low. That's good for people who have money, say, bondholders. So these all contribute to what's called a 'healthy economy,' meaning one with very high profits. Profits are doing fine. Corporate profits are zooming. But for most of the population, very grim circumstances. And grim circumstances, without much prospect of a future, may lead to constructive social action, but where that's lacking they express themselves in violence." [Keeping the Rabble in Line, pp. 283-4]

This does not mean that social anarchists propose to "ban" the market — far from it. This would be impossible. What we do propose is to convince people that a profit-based market system has distinctly bad effects on individuals, society and the planet's ecology, and that we can organise our common activity to replace it with libertarian communism. As Max Stirner argued, "competition. . .has a continued existence. . . [because] all do not attend to their affair and come to an understanding with each other about it. . . .Abolishing competition is not equivalent to favouring the guild. The difference is this: In the guild baking, etc., is the affair of the guild-brothers; in competition, the affair of chance competitors; in the union, of those who require baked goods, and therefore my affair, yours, the affair of neither guildic nor the concessionary baker, but the affair of the united." [Ego and Its Own, p. 275]

Therefore, social anarchists do not appeal to "altruism" in their struggle against the de-humanising effects of the market, but rather, to egoism: the simple fact that co-operation and mutual aid is in our best interests as individuals. By co-operating and controlling "the affairs of the united," we can ensure a free society which is worth living in, one in which the individual is not crushed by market forces and has time to fully develop his or her individuality and uniqueness:

"Solidarity is therefore the state of being in which Man attains the greatest degree of security and wellbeing; and therefore egoism itself, that is the exclusive consideration of one's own interests, impels Man and human society towards solidarity." [Errico Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 28]