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celebratedrecluse OP wrote

your insistence that market relations be voluntary (though only in appearance) is reminiscent of the pro-capitalism argument that the free market is good because it is voluntary to participate

You misunderstand, my definition is that markets consist of formally consented-to (even if the consent is coerced) transactions. The critique of capitalism, is that it isn't voluntary due to the coerced consent. However, the system requires participation, and is characterized by it, even if everyone involved is resentful for various reasons. They still do it. They have to consent, so they do.

If that consent is removed, that is when you start seeing police violence, in capitalist societies. If people stop working, or buying things, if they even elect the wrong leader, soon the military is kicking in doors. and moreover, people will be suffering due to the scarcity/lack which is implemented once they stop consenting. But it is ludicrous to not see the essential character of capitalism as desiring of this formal participation/consent, and coercing the performance this repeatedly in daily life. It is essential to its reproduction and expansion.

So, what, we should just ignore it when talking about exchange? Are you going to coin a new, equally boring term for an economics that focuses on non-bourgeoisie markets? Let us keep the term market and call capitalist-normalized economics by a new term: bullshit.

No, no need to stop talking about in the context of economics. What I'm saying is, theft is not a market, unless the stolen goods are sold. It's not a market relationship, to steal from the grocery store, or your friend, or your employees' paychecks. It's the opposite of that, if anything it's a disruption of a market, by explicitly subverting the rules which preserve that market. The contradiction of theft being part of the economic hegemony, is one of the central contradictions of capitalism, but it's not because theft is a market based relationship. It's one more associated with statecraft, and which is in dynamic, productive contradiction with markets under capitalism today.

I'm not reducing anything to anything by saying both of these are markets. The only similarity explicit in my definition of markets is that they both result in the exchange of goods.

Then the definition of market is too vague, yes. It's more like a definition of "distribution", I guess.

Placing non-traditional (i.e. non-European) contexts of exchange alongside the sacred bullshit of free-market right-libertarians is a clear break from capitalist-normalized economics, and I think it's a good thing insofar as it causes people indoctrinated into capitalist economics to look at other forms of exchange.

I think it also causes people to extrapolate european-spread social norms and assumptions, onto things which had an entirely different historical context. It dissolves history, which is a trademark of neoliberalism for example.

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Ennui wrote

So your redefinition is markets as spectacle (to use the term loosely, if it was ever used specifically). And you think the left-wing market-anarchist crowd would benefit from acknowledging this spectacle in a more critical way than they currently do. At least we can agree there.

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celebratedrecluse OP wrote

That's part of it, but I am also saying that you can't just lump theft in with markets, they are different terms that are not hierarchically ordered the way you are asserting. The only way to force that cube into the spherical hole, is to reduce it in some way to something less useful except in the specific rhetorical context you are using here.

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