If imperialism and coercion are incompatible with capitalism, I can't think of any existing capitalist societies. All of the major powers considered by the vast majority of the world are out of the question.
Capitalism is strictly an economic system, it concerns voluntary trade between private individuals. Anything short of that is an abberation. Joe & Shmoe Co. are not going to war in Iraq to seize oil, they're just selling gizmos to people who want to buy them at Joe & Shmoe's Wacky Emporium Ltd. - I would be cautious in blaming capitalism for the failures of any given state. Conversely, socialism is *also* an economic system, but in contrast, it requires and consequently creates a state aparathus since, as we've discussed, its implementation necessitates the use of force, at least that's my take on how it usually turns out in practice. You are free to offer your goods and services without charge under capitalism, you are not free to pursue the profit motive under socialism - by definition, the former is inherently more liberal than the latter, in economic terms.
Can you cite a source for any of your claims, but particularly this? Malatesta wrote often about the need for militias, as did most other anarchist thinkers of the 20th century. The CNT-FAI fought the Spanish fascists and then the Soviets. The YPG is currently fighting ISIS and the Turkish fascists. Pacifist anarchism is definitely a thing, but it has held very little influence on libertarian socialism and anarcho-syndicalism. I don't know of any anarcho-syndicalist or libertarian socialist organization that held a pacifist line.
It's in the name, but I'll elaborate. Libertarian socialists and anarcho-syndicalists are anti-authoritarian and anti-state. If you have no state and no centralised body responsible for military action, going to war in an organised fashion becomes a bit of a pickle. You raise an interesting point regarding militias, I suppose that is a form of occupation that one might willingly choose, however I can also see the potential for those devolving into tribalist factions in the event of internal conflict. They're also probably more interested in external threats rather than keeping the peace internally - the "anarcho" bit isn't there for giggles, they've rejected the state, after all. Putting that aside for a moment, here's a short quote:
The role of anarcho-syndicalist networks and unions is not to try and recruit every worker, but to advocate and organise mass meetings of all workers involved in each struggle so that the workers involved retain control. Within these mass meetings anarcho-syndicalists argue for the principles of solidarity, direct action and self-organisation.
In this way anarcho-syndicalism is completely different to trade unionism, which seeks to represent our economic interests, and the so-called ‘workers parties’ which seek to represent our political interests. Instead, anarcho-syndicalism unites the political and the economic and opposes representation in favour of self-organisation.
https://libcom.org/library/what-anarcho-syndicalism
This pretty strictly adheres to Rocker's idea of what it should be.
The organisation of Anarcho-Syndicalism is based on the principles of Federalism, on free combination from below upward, putting the right of self-determination of every member above everything else and recognising only the organic agreement of all on the basis of like interests and common convictions.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/rudolf-rocker-anarchosyndicalism
Considering the fact that Rocker is one of the most prominent anarchist writers associated with the movement I assume he knows what he's talking about. Both quotes have something important in common - voluntary participation. While militias can combat external and internal threats, which is again a good point, they reject coercion as it is incompatible with their idea of unionisation, which is what I meant. They will happily fight against an external threat, like a foreign invasion, or an internal threat, like a fascist dictatorship, however in terms of day-to-day operation they seem to emphasise advocacy rather than use of force. I hope that clarification is satisfactory. I don't consider self-defense (against invasion or persecution) as something the state necessarily needs to be involved in, it's a basic right.
Capitalists almost always have to be forced to give up their property and resources.
Capitalists are willingly putting their resources up for sale - they don't want their own products, they made them in the first place with the intention of selling them to you. They want money, and you are welcome to voluntarily engage in commerce with them. That's a consensual exchange, and sort of the whole point of the system. You don't *have* to shop in store X, you can go to store Y, nobody's forcing you to do anything. By seizing property that does not belong to you, you've engaged in an activity that caused harm to the injured party, and under a capitalist economy that damage is measurable - it's equivalent to the cost of the item stolen. Under a system that rejects currency damages would be rather nebulous and hard to assess, but of course, this is a lesson we've learned nearly 5000 years ago as we minted the first coin in Mesopotamia and replaced trading commodities in favour of a uniform currency. It's funny how regressive some of these ideologies are when you say that out loud, it's a bit like rejecting the wheel.
There are currently existing libertarian socialist societies right now and capitalism is still quite young. In my opinion, capitalism is a foolishly idealistic ideology which has never existed on any sort of scale without state authority. We have managed to concoct a system that
destroys 30-40% of the food it produces (in the US) while
10.5 million households are food insecure. Marx was right, the issue is artificial scarcity and it is not utopian to push for better redistribution of resources.
Existing in name only, but I'll bite. Marx was right to die in poverty and disease, that's about the only worthwhile thing he's done after years of mooching off of his wealthy donors. It's a shame that not all food we produce ends up in the hands of customers - some is discarded due to its low quality, much of it is destroyed once it reaches its Best Before or Use By dates. The inability to redistribute it to food banks is a failure of the state, not of capitalism - I assure you that a capitalist would most certainly dispose of it in a more pragmatic manner since food disposal is rather expensive, but in the absence of an incentive to do so there is no point in undercutting your own market. You raise an interesting point - why is food so expensive that it becomes unaffordable? Could it be that farm subsidies keep farmers who have no business planting certain crops afloat despite lack of demand, thus creating an unnecessary surplus of goods that must be stockpiled by the state or destroyed in an effort to fix prices? Y'know, something that the free market would self-regulate otherwise, forcing those farmers to re-spec and produce something else? Oh my, did socialism just artificially inflate food prices? Maybe we should stop doing that.
I guess you don't consider the US to be capitalist though because we steal resources from other nations and peoples.
Who's "we"? "We" don't go to war, the state goes to war, "we" go to work.
Could you please answer my question about where Chomsky identifies as an AnSyn?
I already have, so I disregarded the question. This conclusion can be gathered from a cursory reading of For Reasons of State, which I already quoted, but he's more direct in an interview with Peter Jay titled "The Relevance of Anarcho-syndicalism" where he calls himself a "fellow traveller [of anarcho-syndicalism]". I mean, that's what the interview's about, hard to interpret it in any other way.
https://chomsky.info/19760725/
In 2005 he released a book called On Anarchism, a collection of essays and interviews, which is basically him espousing anarcho-syndicalist ideals from front to back. In said book he calls libertarian socialism the "logical conclusion of liberalism" and anarchism an "inherently socialist philosophy" - it's pretty clean-cut.
https://books.google.com/books/about/On_Anarchism.html?id=sDomngEACAAJ
This has been a fun distraction, but as I've mentioned earlier, we should probably return to the subject at hand. If you have any further questions you can reach out to me privately, although I think I covered my point of view adequately - I don't have much to add.
