[Eran]

The question is meaningless without context.

Compare it to the idiotic example where parliament (or Congress) decides to send police forces and block all roads to and from my property.

Both are theoretically possible within the respective political ideologies, but highly unlikely.

Or, consider a much more likely scenario, in which the mayor of my town decides to confiscate my property outright, because his property developer friends promise they'll build a nice shopping mall on it.



To answer your question, though, libertarians don't only recognize outright property rights (though those get most of the attention), but also use rights (or easements) which give people the right to use resources on a non-exclusive basis. Rights of way have long been recognized in common law, and form an integral part of libertarian property rights theory.

Having a right of way means that whoever bought a "ring of property" would still be obliged to allow me to go to and from my property, assuming my regular use of such right preceded his taking over the property.

[ThereBeDragons]

The question is meaningless without context. Compare it to the idiotic example where parliament (or Congress) decides to send police forces and block all roads to and from my property. Both are theoretically possible within the respective political ideologies, but highly unlikely.

They can, but they will not, because they do not have anything to gain from it (and, in fact, may lose quite a lot from it). However, if I were to acquire this ring, I could lawfully enrich myself for all you're worth, assuming you would rather live than starve out of spite.

To answer your question, though, libertarians don't only recognize outright property rights (though those get most of the attention), but also use rights (or easements) which give people the right to use resources on a non-exclusive basis. Rights of way have long been recognized in common law, and form an integral part of libertarian property rights theory.

Having a right of way means that whoever bought a "ring of property" would still be obliged to allow me to go to and from my property, assuming my regular use of such right preceded his taking over the property.

I see. Thank you for clarifying.

[Eran]

They can, but they will not, because they do not have anything to gain from it (and, in fact, may lose quite a lot from it).

Who knows? Maybe you are their political opponent. Maybe you insulted them online. Maybe they hold a grudge since highschool.

At the very least, they could do so on behalf of their land-developing friends. Countless examples of eminent domain abuse in the US illustrate the point - once you give government power, you have no guarantee that it won't be used for bad purposes.

In a democracy, they will, of course, cloak their action under a smokescreen of the "public good". Maybe labelling you as anti-social. Or the action is required for the latest "War on..." (drugs, poverty, terrorism, ...)

[KurtFF8]

We can start by agreeing to limit government's role to that of enforcing (legitimate) property rights.

This is an arbitrary role, however. Why is the role of enforcing property rights any more legitimize than enforcing (to pick an equally arbitrary subject) public health for example?

We can separately discuss how, once certain values come to prevail within society, a stable and just enforcement of property rights can proceed without government.

Well this conception is one I think libertarians have a very difficult time with: private property rights enforcement. Their opposition to the monopoly on legitimiate violence leads them usually to support things like a neo-pinkerton kind of method of property rights enforcement.

That last comment suggests to me that we are talking cross each other, using different terminology. In my usage, "force" is just that - physical force, the threat thereof, against a person or his legitimate property (thus including theft and fraud).

To be clear, only the initiation of force is prohibited. The use of (proportionate) defensive or restitutive force are legitimate.

With that in mind, what do you have in mind when you refer to "economic initiation of force"?

But even physical force to enforce property rights makes no sense. Property rights are quite arbitrary, and they run in direct contradiction to other kinds of rights when we begin to examin productive property. For example, the commodified form of labor (when a worker must sell their labor power on the market place) is under the logic of capital: property owned by that worker. The wage amount and access to the surplus produced is not a set amount and thus the ownership (and enforcement) of that property's productive capacity is able to be "legitimately" contested. (For examples: see the history of capitalism for the past 200 years or so and labor struggles that have taken place since).


I'm not sure how violence to defend private property could eve be defensive, explain that to me.

Also, perhaps it was a stretch to apply the term violence to economic coercion: for example wage theft through unjust disciplinary action is not something as cut and dry as libertarians would see a solution to.

[Eran]

This is an arbitrary role, however. Why is the role of enforcing property rights any more legitimize than enforcing (to pick an equally arbitrary subject) public health for example?

Personally, I agree. However, it does make discussion easier.

I don't know what "public health" means. The "public" isn't healthy or sick. Individuals are.

Well this conception is one I think libertarians have a very difficult time with: private property rights enforcement. Their opposition to the monopoly on legitimate violence leads them usually to support things like a neo-pinkerton kind of method of property rights enforcement.

I have no difficulty at all. The critical component is that the libertarian ethics (based, broadly, on the Non Aggression Principle) has to be widely-accepted (in just the way that ideas of democratic legitimacy are today, or those of the Divine Right of Kings were in the past).

Once such ideas are widespread, private (or, to be precise, non-monopolistic) protection of property rights is no more likely to lead to abuse than, say, an American President perpetrating a military coup.

And what, please tell me, do you consider the Pinkerton kind of method of property rights enforcement?

But even physical force to enforce property rights makes no sense. Property rights are quite arbitrary, and they run in direct contradiction to other kinds of rights when we begin to examine productive property.

Libertarian Property Rights (as opposed to government-defined-and-imposed property rights, which are, indeed, quite arbitrary) aren't at all arbitrary.

Fundamentally, they are based on the Non Aggression Principle in its project-based formulation ("It is wrong to initiate force against another person or their ongoing (peaceful) projects.

Thus every person has property rights in their own body (non-alienable according to most libertarians) in the sense that he, and only he, has the right to control that body.

Every person may acquire rights in previously unused natural resources by incorporating them into a (peaceful) project in a way that (reasonably) requires exclusive use. The canonical example is agricultural homesteading, e.g. clearing, fencing and cultivating a field.

Finally, every person may acquire property rights through gift or trade.

That's it (other than rights acquired by restitution paid following prior violation of property rights).

There is nothing arbitrary about these rights. They merely formalize the basic understanding that initiating force against others (or their projects) is wrong.

For example, the commodified form of labor (when a worker must sell their labor power on the market place) is under the logic of capital: property owned by that worker. The wage amount and access to the surplus produced is not a set amount and thus the ownership (and enforcement) of that property's productive capacity is able to be "legitimately" contested. (For examples: see the history of capitalism for the past 200 years or so and labor struggles that have taken place since).

In a libertarian society, no worker is ever obliged to "sell his labour". Rather, workers may (if it suits them) enter into a mutually-advantageous agreement with an employer.

Indeed outside the rhetoric of trade unions, the vast majority of employees value their relation with their employers, rather than finding it in any way negative. So much so that losing one's job (i.e. the termination of that mutually-advantageousness relation) is considered a great harm. Conversely, the "holy grail" of most government economic policies is "job creation", in other words more numerous offerings of employment by employers.

I'm not sure how violence to defend private property could eve be defensive, explain that to me.

Gladly. I have worked for months clearing and cultivating a field. I have now planted, and awaiting the growth of my crop.

You come with your herd of cows and trample my field, thereby destroying months of work. I may legitimately use (reasonable) force to stop you from doing that. Such use of force is defensive.

Similarly, I have worked hard and bought a house and a TV. You come and break into my house with the intention of stealing my TV. I may use (reasonable) force to prevent you from doing that. Such use of force would, again, be defensive.

Also, perhaps it was a stretch to apply the term violence to economic coercion: for example wage theft through unjust disciplinary action is not something as cut and dry as libertarians would see a solution to.

The terms of any employment-related disciplinary action would be governed by the employment agreement, to which both sides agreed in advance. If it is done in accordance with that agreement, it isn't aggressive (I don't like the term "violence", since it interjects a moral judgement into actions that may or may not be legitimate). The employee always retains the right to leave an employer whose actions he disapproves of.

However, if the disciplinary action violates that employment agreement, the employee has a legitimate cause of action, and may, ultimately, employ force (typically through an enforcement agency) to recover appropriate restitution.

[KurtFF8]

Personally, I agree. However, it does make discussion easier.

I don't know what "public health" means. The "public" isn't healthy or sick. Individuals are.

Well this last sentence is one for a whole new thread (which I'm okay with engaging in at some point). I find it interesting you deny the existence of the public, yet acknowledge an amalgamation of individuals who may become sick. But I digress (and I don't think this will help us for now indeed).

I have no difficulty at all. The critical component is that the libertarian ethics (based, broadly, on the Non Aggression Principle) has to be widely-accepted (in just the way that ideas of democratic legitimacy are today, or those of the Divine Right of Kings were in the past).

Once such ideas are widespread, private (or, to be precise, non-monopolistic) protection of property rights is no more likely to lead to abuse than, say, an American President perpetrating a military coup.

In other words, the working class for example must be ideologically trained to accept its position of a non-property owning class and submit to the rights of the propertied class? This of course has to a large extent already been accomplished in "post-industrial" societies like the United States. But of course I'm sure you would rather the discussion be based on the actors of the government versus private business owners. The problem with that move is of course it ignores most actually-existing-individuals.

And what, please tell me, do you consider the Pinkerton kind of method of property rights enforcement?

Here's a good example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike

Libertarian Property Rights (as opposed to government-defined-and-imposed property rights, which are, indeed, quite arbitrary) aren't at all arbitrary.

Fundamentally, they are based on the Non Aggression Principle in its project-based formulation ("It is wrong to initiate force against another person or their ongoing (peaceful) projects.

Thus every person has property rights in their own body (non-alienable according to most libertarians) in the sense that he, and only he, has the right to control that body.

Every person may acquire rights in previously unused natural resources by incorporating them into a (peaceful) project in a way that (reasonably) requires exclusive use. The canonical example is agricultural homesteading, e.g. clearing, fencing and cultivating a field.

Finally, every person may acquire property rights through gift or trade.

That's it (other than rights acquired by restitution paid following prior violation of property rights).

There is nothing arbitrary about these rights. They merely formalize the basic understanding that initiating force against others (or their projects) is wrong.

This is all nice until we actually examine, as I said previously: productive property. Pretty much every workplace that employs people requires a set of individuals (or as a Marxist would say, class) to not own property. Industrial (and "post-Industrial") capitalism absoultely requires that not everyone have access to property.

The problem is that you take Marx's conception of labor as a commodity to a bizarre extreme while ignoring most of the consequences of that characteristic of a labor market.

In a libertarian society, no worker is ever obliged to "sell his labour". Rather, workers may (if it suits them) enter into a mutually-advantageous agreement with an employer.

All terms of employment (abstractly speaking) are "mutually advantageous" and contractual. Marx described this as the freeing of the working class compared to the restriction to the land under the previously dominant mode of production (Feudalism). That doesn't make this overall arrangement equal, however. As the capitalist and the worker enter the market "equally," it requires "pure force" for them to come to an agreement to their terms of employment. And as Marx points out: the capitalist actually ends up largely leaching off of the worker even in the most generous terms of employment because of the nature of surplus production under a private propertied commodity system.

Gladly. I have worked for months clearing and cultivating a field. I have now planted, and awaiting the growth of my crop.

You come with your herd of cows and trample my field, thereby destroying months of work. I may legitimately use (reasonable) force to stop you from doing that. Such use of force is defensive.

Similarly, I have worked hard and bought a house and a TV. You come and break into my house with the intention of stealing my TV. I may use (reasonable) force to prevent you from doing that. Such use of force would, again, be defensive.

Okay, what about a case where workers are being locked out of a factory over a wage dispute. Or where a surplus value (created directly by workers) is being used to their determined by a factory owner. Let's say under these scenarios that both the owner and workers begin to engage in violence: which is defensive and which is offensive? It seems to me that a libertarian would assume the capitalists is automatically defensive because property rights are being threatened. But this just demonstrates the emptiness of the concept of property rights.

The terms of any employment-related disciplinary action would be governed by the employment agreement, to which both sides agreed in advance. If it is done in accordance with that agreement, it isn't aggressive (I don't like the term "violence", since it interjects a moral judgement into actions that may or may not be legitimate). The employee always retains the right to leave an employer whose actions he disapproves of.

However, if the disciplinary action violates that employment agreement, the employee has a legitimate cause of action, and may, ultimately, employ force (typically through an enforcement agency) to recover appropriate restitution.

I would love to see someone with this concept go try to negotiate an agreement like this with a company like WalMart without an organization like a Union to back them up.

[ralfy]

Possibly.

But it really doesn't matter, does it? You can lobby based on money, or access to votes, or the loudness and effectiveness of your propaganda.

Not "possibly" but what has been going on for three decades or so.

The bottom line is that giving power to government officials opens society to corruption and abuse. The only just society is one in which no-one may legitimately initiate force against others. Regardless of whether they are capitalists, socialists or fascists, and regardless of the pretty words they may use to justify their action.

If one cannot "legitimately initiate force," then he can do it "illegitimately."

Finally, somehow your whole post supports the title thread.

[Eran]

I find it interesting you deny the existence of the public, yet acknowledge an amalgamation of individuals who may become sick.

My point is that the "public good" (in general, or specifically in the context of health) is nothing more than the good of its members (in general, or specifically in the context of health). This is to dispel the common rhetoric trick of suggestion that the public good somehow consists of anything beyond the good of the individual members of the public.

In other words, the working class for example must be ideologically trained to accept its position of a non-property owning class and submit to the rights of the propertied class?

The working class will learn to recognize that government action, regardless of rhetoric, tends to be biased in favour of the wealthy and against those of the poor. That laws supposedly protecting their interests (e.g. minimum wage) actually reduce their options. That they don't need a big brother (or mother) to tell them what's good for them - that they are better off making their own decisions.

Everybody owns property. The most valuable property in society is nothing else but human beings, each of whom owns themselves. Thus the greatest wealth in society is owned by the widest classes, be it "working" or "middle".

Here's a good example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike

Excellent example. Having read the description in detail, in seems obvious that the Pinkerton agents acted, by and large, in self-defence, while the union forces took aggressive and violent action against both property and person.

This is also an excellent example in demonstrating the fallacy in the view that the unions are pro-labour. The unions, to be clear, are pro-union. Not pro-labour. Unions invariably represent attempts to use force to monopolise the provision of labour, typically and most obviously against the interests of non-union (and typically less skilled, less well paid, and thus more needy) workers.

This is all nice until we actually examine, as I said previously: productive property. Pretty much every workplace that employs people requires a set of individuals (or as a Marxist would say, class) to not own property. Industrial (and "post-Industrial") capitalism absoultely requires that not everyone have access to property.

How do you figure?

In modern capitalism, the value of "means of production" is less and less important. The funding of "means of production" tends to come, not from individual capitalists, but from financial institutions that aggregate the savings of many people, including those owning relatively little.

Thus the distinction between property owning and non property owning makes less and less sense, and bears less and less relevance to actual people's lives.

In particular, the so-called "capitalist class", characterised by making their income through their ownership of productive property rather than labour, is virtually empty. The wealthiest members of society (with the exception of a negligible number of rich heirs) tend to also be the hardest working (or retired). Most productive enterprises are publicly owned, with decisions made by hired managers rather than capital owners. More and more of the capital is (for bad reasons and bad results) provided through debt funding, further reducing the power of capital providers to control the daily operations of the business.

the capitalist actually ends up largely leaching off of the worker even in the most generous terms of employment because of the nature of surplus production under a private propertied commodity system.

That doesn't make any sense. A cooperative production effort involves the joining of multiple valuable factors, including both capital and labour. Since both are valuable and scarce, both "deserve" some part of the fruits of the productive enterprise. Your statement amounts to arguing that the contribution of those bringing capital into the joint venture ought not be compensated.

Further, more often than not, it is labour who hires capital, rather than the other way around. How else would you characterise the most common scenario in which a start-up is funded through a loan from a bank? The providers of capital (the bank's depositors) are paid a fixed amount (akin to wages), while those contributing the labour (the entrepreneurs) run the business and enjoy any up-side.

I am not sure Marx's description had any relevant to 19th century production, but it is obviously completely out of touch with what's going on in the 21st century.

Okay, what about a case where workers are being locked out of a factory over a wage dispute.

That depends on the term of the employment agreement between them and the factory owner.

Or where a surplus value (created directly by workers) is being used to their determined by a factory owner.

The surplus value wasn't created directly by the workers, but rather created through a joint venture between the workers and the factory owner. It ought to be distributed based on their prior agreement.

If the factory owners didn't bring into the joint venture resources of sufficiently great value to justify their cut of the surplus value, the workers could have started the venture themselves, and hired what resources they require (see above regarding the ready availability of bank loans).

More often than not, what factory owners bring to the table isn't primarily capital, but rather entrepreneurship, the willingness to work hard and take risks, superior market knowledge and reputation (personal or institutional) built over years of responsible hard work.

All of those are, in principle and often in practice, available to all. Capital is typically the easiest resource to acquire.

Let's say under these scenarios that both the owner and workers begin to engage in violence: which is defensive and which is offensive

That depends on the term of the employment agreement between them and the factory owner.

I would love to see someone with this concept go try to negotiate an agreement like this with a company like WalMart without an organization like a Union to back them up.

Walmart, much like my local supermarket, engages in a "take-it-or-leave-it" approach to agreements. An individual worker cannot negotiate an employment agreement with Walmart, just as I cannot negotiate over the price of bread in my local supermarket.

In both cases, the individual (worker or consumer) has the freedom to simply walk away.

And since Walmart needs workers, it has to up its terms to the point that enough workers are willing to work for it (just as the supermarket, requiring consumer, must keep its prices low enough to attract shoppers).

Just because I cannot negotiate the price of bread in my local supermarket (and I must have bread to live!) doesn't imply that I am exploited by the supermarket, or that the price of bread is excessive. Competition amongst supermarkets keeps prices reasonable.

Just because I cannot negotiate the terms of employment at Walmart (and I have to have a job to live!) doesn't imply that I am exploited by Walmart, or that the terms of employment are unfair. Competition amongst employers keeps terms of employment reasonable.

If one cannot "legitimately initiate force," then he can do it "illegitimately."

Aggression perceived as illegitimate is much easier to deal with than aggression perceived as legitimate. The former is treated as criminal, and the forces of society can (and usually are) amassed against it.

The latter is accepted as a matter of course, and leaves individuals effectively helpless.

[Rothbardian]

Yes, but one of the two will have much more lobbying money to get what they want.

Seriously? That's it? Capitalists will have more money therefor they are the enemy? If you create a giant red oppression button called the state it's going to be difficult for ANYONE to not use it. Capitalists will buy the state, socialists will control it directly. For that matter voters will milk it for all its worth as well.

But in terms of capitalist vs socialist it doesn't make any difference at all for the regular people living under it. Christ, what a stupid thing to take issue with.

[ralfy]

Seriously? That's it? Capitalists will have more money therefor they are the enemy? If you create a giant red oppression button called the state it's going to be difficult for ANYONE to not use it. Capitalists will buy the state, socialists will control it directly. For that matter voters will milk it for all its worth as well.

But in terms of capitalist vs socialist it doesn't make any difference at all for the regular people living under it. Christ, what a stupid thing to take issue with.

Where did I argue that capitalists "are the enemy"?

How do you have an "oppression" button when both capitalists AND voters can use it for their own advantage?

What you're not saying is that citizens will vote for government that support capitalists, with the first providing tax cuts and the second easy credit.

But does this mean that there's no exploitation and that capitalists are helpless? Not at all! With tax cuts and easy credit, citizens are able to purchase a middle class lifestyle, but that increasing debt will soon catch up with them.

Finally, are you saying that "milking it for all its worth" is the same as buying or controlling?

[edelker]

@Eran:


Hello all,

I’m new to this forum and this discussion-so please attempt to bear with me. I know that Kurf is plainly able to respond here, but I cannot help but to throw my two-cents in on a couple of points made by Eran.


Eran wrote,

“My point is that the "public good" (in general, or specifically in the context of health) is nothing more than the good of its members (in general, or specifically in the context of health). This is to dispel the common rhetoric trick of suggestion that the public good somehow consists of anything beyond the good of the individual members of the public.”



Not sure why you might think that the philosophically informed wouldn’t have recognized this use of “public good” as meaning just this and still speak of a “greater good.” If, for instance, human beings have common interests, then the “interests” of the individual can be analyzed in its relationship to the whole without this sort of gross reductionism.


It would seem to me that this sort of reductionism about the “public” is equally puzzling at the level of the individual. What constitutes both an “individual” is as ontologically confusing at certain relevant points of analysis as is the case with the “social,” let alone “individual” interest vs. public interest or goods. In basic, the only trick here is which do we consider to be the most relevant and for which context we would apply these conceptual schemes. But as far as there being a clear reductionist relationship between the public good and the good of the individual members is concerned, we do not have any reason to think that the relationship is either clear or ought to be one of reductionism. Perhaps you could better explain, in detail, your point here. After all, there’s a way to explicate the public and private as part and parcel of the same sort of thing. The interests of both depend on how we conceive these relationships to exist. As of yet, I see no reason to think that my interests are “fundamentally” different from the “public” or even a greater social good merely because there is a relationship between individual interests and social.


You must show that the reductionist view to be the only causally correct one-and I honestly doubt that you could make that case.


Eran wrote,

“The working class will learn to recognize that government action, regardless of rhetoric, tends to be biased in favour of the wealthy and against those of the poor. That laws supposedly protecting their interests (e.g. minimum wage) actually reduce their options. That they don't need a big brother (or mother) to tell them what's good for them - that they are better off making their own decisions.”


Yes, indeed! Many socialists agree with this analysis. Myself included (although such an analysis only really addresses—or mainly addresses— Keynesian economics theory and practice). However, it’s hard to see how Libertarianism wouldn’t lead to such conditions more readily. In socialism, there’s the notion that class, and the imbalanced resource distribution that makes class, in part, possible, is erased as not to lean towards certain types of unjust imbalances. No such notion exists in classical and neo-classical thought, quite obviously. Imbalance, we’re told anyway, is but a logical and natural outflow of any legitimate capitalist order.


Herein lies the rub however: classical and neo-classical thought attempts to generally argue that government and economic interests are to remain on divided sides of a well demarcated social-legal line. Yet, the market side of this line is fundamentally driven by individual interests-at least this is the theoretical storyline. Now, we must assume that there would be no, or little, personal-individual interest/advantage, rational or otherwise, for a capitalist, or a politician within a capitalist country, to ever have such a reason to blend the two. But this is precisely, and rather obviously, the reason most successful capitalists today and of yesteryear (including the politicians themselves) have often wished to blur the line differentiating the two: the advantages for doing so preserves and promotes one’s self-interests better than if one chooses, for rather abstract theoretical reasons, not to. In a capitalist system there will always be incentives for capitalists, and politicians, to blur the line of separation for individual- respective gains.



For example, we know that most businesses fail, even most successful ones will eventually go under or face severe economic downturns. If I’m a businessman that finds himself squeezed by some competition, I would find it wonderfully well within my interests to have close friends of mine in the government provide my competitors several new legal challenges to overcome (new business districting laws; added licensure laws; violation of some obscure newly implemented environmental policy etc.). In turn, they would enjoy the benefits of my social-economic influence and power come election time.



Moreover, there will always be incentives for the common people to democratically want this as well. If, for example, the people’s jobs rely on their employer, and their employer sees an advantage to move production elsewhere, politicians are likely to be pressured by strong democratic forces to act and to offer either “legislative solutions” to prohibit such a movement-or to entice the capitalist to remain (new tax policy favoring local or state businesses; anti-union legislation; or repealing costly worker-protective regulations etc.). Many times the capitalists will approve of whichever government/legal-labor advantages will likely benefit him-her or it. In the end, such unions are inevitable. In a capitalist system those in economic power will always have good reasons to involve political power promoting their interests-and vice versa. Both will always find such a union to yield far more positive results for all directly involved. This is true whether we’re discussing the Keynesian economic notions you were actually addressing or neo-classical or classical capitalism. All forms of capitalism will likely collapse by way of allocating total power into the hands of those very relative few who rule economically and politically. Already, and historically, those often in political power are the same people in economic power. Capitalism either theoretically or practically has never successfully dealt with this real problem.



However, there’s typically one common response the classical and neo-classical theorists make use of here (albeit not a very persuasive one, as we’ll see shortly). They would argue that such a line separating the two must be made somehow—and often must be made legally or, depending on how you interpret “property” rights and contract law, simply reinforcing some set of Constitutional or “natural” rights already- somehow- in existence. In any case, advocates of capitalism argue that such a situation would have to be handled in some socially approved coercive manner.



But, given the above argument, we see why this isn’t a persuasive response. It oddly involves the very thing the classicists or neo-classicists abhors: it must use law, and its judicial appendages to monitor, enforce, and interpret violations of such mixing. Here we don’t have any such guarantee that a, say, Libertarian government would involve ‘less” government than the current mixed capitalism of, say, the U.S. or Britain. Such involvement will always be dependent on how well the market, politicians, consumers, judges, communities etc. obey such laws. If they do, then no problem. But if they do not, and we’ve seen both from the internal logic of capitalism-and historically why many would find it a good thing NOT to honor any such division, then government presence in business, community, and everywhere else will likely be enormous. Capitalism, whether it is in the classical form or in the Keynesian form, will likely always lead to the corruption of the theoretical integrity of capitalism as a whole. In the end, it would appear that the worst enemies of capitalism are capitalists!


Unless classicists and neo-classicists find the social component somehow more relevant than most actually do, none advocating such a position will likely ever resolve this theoretical and historical problem.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



One last point on how any of this relates to exploitation. If the capitalist economic system is one wherein fundamental social forces are those directly involved with gaining ever greater portions of the market, which also moves to consolidate that socio-economic power with political power, then the obvious result is that those in such positions would not have to negotiate with anyone, including providing greater options for consumers and labor. Yet, such a thing wouldn’t be possible unless there was already in place a system wherein those who gain ownership over the means of production have the chance to expand that ownership and power over employment.


The issue is what gives capitalists the right over others production to begin with? How is capitalism NOT a system wherein the FEW use the many to generate such economic surpluses that they-the FEW-had no direct causal role in bringing about the very goods and services generated by the many? The explanations you use to show that this isn’t about power and social structure but about a complex set of explicit and implicit negotiations simply leaves out why there’s so much non-cooperation and conflict in the system itself.


For instance, your example of Wal-Mart is a case in point. It is true that we have the ability, as employees or potential employees, to walk out. Yet, this isn’t a real ECONOMIC POWER per se simply because Wal-Mart OWNES a significant share of the market wherein by the shear fact that they do-they can set the market pricing for all retail stores (keep in mind Wal-Mart produces NOTHING-rather they take and set contract prices for companies and workers who do) and gobble up an enormous share of the labor-market. So, for example, if you’re a high school graduate with a sick parent your ability to “walk out” will likely be dramatically reduced by means of necessity. Companies like Wal-Mart take control of the market so that goods producers have little option but to sell their wares in such retail markets and employees have fewer competitive employer options. Wal-Mart did nothing to produce the products they sell and rely on the cheap labor to expand and promote further wealth surpluses. Note: none of this is due to the owners themselves doing anything above and beyond manipulating social forces already in existence to further provide for themselves increased advantages over resources that they did nothing to create.


The power of the labor market and the retail market to compete against this sort of colossal economic force is dramatically reduced. The market mechanisms in play here are not enough to explain such phenomena. Certainly explaining such phenomena as a result of competitive economic and labor forces acting on one another makes utterly no sense whatsoever since such notions would require us to believe that both labor and businesses wanted this sort of outcome-or found that such an outcome is what consumers wanted. We know this isn’t the actual history-however. Wal-Mart was explicitly active in bringing about this sort of situation. So how was such a social situation possible at all since neither the “invisible hand” nor anything else within the usual capitalist arsenal of explanations will do? Exploitation!


In other words, if we already, as laborers, for example, MUST sell our labor to some owner of production, then that owner does appear to be taking the labor value of our production for himself-a surplus of labor he did nothing to produce directly. If consumers MUST buy from the very owners of production that employs them, then we have, via Marxian Theory, a theoretical means to explain the many things like the Wal-Mart phenomenon as well as the inherent conflict and opposing interests that we directly experience and we see all around us as laborers and business competitors. So, the goal of any capitalist is to gobble up as much of the consumer and labor market as possible. Why? Obviously in order to CONTROL economic outcomes, i.e., reduce employee and consumer choices! The issue, therefore, seems to be about power and just acquisition of the surpluses we all create. The capitalist simply assumes that there’s enough individual ownership and cooperation between all economic entities (labor, owners, landlords) sufficient to make room for theoretical entities like “the invisible hand” to make sense of the outcomes. Yet, such an explanation can neither account for why there’s clearly an imbalance and conflict between interests, distribution of resources on the basis of individual effort even though no such capitalist industry appears to work without the ability to take from labor the market value of what they (labor) produces, and the willful structuring of economic outcomes in order to reduce explicit negotiating power from both labor and weaker competitors—the ultimate goal of any capitalist!


The system in play already allows for the owners of production to take from labor and make use the advantages of social and natural resources that such owners neither acquired fully through their own efforts nor are directly responsible for creating. Capitalist theory of negotiation and theory of just acquisition just simply won’t do. Indeed, examining capitalism without examining the power interests and influence involved leaves far more questions than answers.




I’ll stop here for now,


Eric D.

[Eran]

Eric,
I apologise for taking this long to respond to your post. It is lengthy and merits careful attention.

I have a problem with the term "public good" for a variety of reasons.

Fundamentally, individuals have different interests, values and preferences. With that in mind, what is the public good?

Individuals clearly have interests, i.e. goals they value. Those goals may be persona in nature (e.g. having better health or more money), but they can just as easily be communal in nature (e.g. fighting poverty in their community or promoting basic scientific research). The public good is indistinguishable from the combined community-oriented values of individuals.

Thus if people are interested in fighting poverty or promoting basic scientific research, they are perfectly capable of donating money to charities or research institutions that pursue those goals.

The term "public good" is used as a cover by politicians and community leaders to promote their individual priorities and values over those of individual members of their respective communities. Thus only if a politician wants, for whatever reason, to provide more funding for a given goal than would be given voluntarily by the public is there a need to label that goal "public good".

Virtually no conditions, products are services are intrinsically "good". They are "good" in so far (and to the extent) that they are valued by people. Only individuals can value things. Societies, communities, nations or countries do not have independent thinking and decision-making abilities. The "public good" is really a short-hand for "Mr. X's opinion as to the public good".

That is why it makes sense to place the focus of questions of value, good, preference at the individual rather than either a higher (community, society) or lower (cells, organs) level of aggregation.

You must show that the reductionist view to be the only causally correct one-and I honestly doubt that you could make that case.

I hope I showed you why I believe the reductionist view is not merely the only correct one, it is the only meaningful one.

In other words, the public good is always reduced to the value preferences of individuals. The only question is whether those are all members of the community, each acting and making decisions for themselves, or those of a handful of leaders, whether they excuse their choices be rhetorically appealing to the "public good" or not.

However, it’s hard to see how Libertarianism wouldn’t lead to such conditions more readily.

Let me try and argue the point.

Socialists (especially those with anarchist rather than statist bend) try to argue that a worker's choice to accept a given employment isn't "really" voluntary, because that worker's choices are strictly limited. The analogy is the "choice" of "your money or your life" given by a robber to the robbed. Obviously, this isn't "really" a voluntary choice.

In this context, then, it is important that we not only acknowledge the limited range of options available to the worker, but also analyse the source of those limits.

Some limits are inherent in the nature of reality. People need food, and food doesn't grow on trees (well, some foods do, but you understand what I mean). Work must be done to create the basic needs that people first have to have to survive, and then really want to have to live well (by the changing standards of society). Unless you advocate having some people parasitically living off the (involuntarily-extracted) labour of others, every person needs to either work and produce to support themselves, or rely on the charitable voluntary assistance of others.

But many limits on people's range of choices as to how to produce and support themselves are artificial, man-made. Many people could, for example, offer services as a taxi-driver. Objectively, nothing is required beyond owning a car. But government regulations make such employment very difficult, as the number of licensed taxi drivers is often strictly limited.

Virtually all labour regulations, properly understood, have the effect, even if not always the intent, of limiting the range of choices open to workers. A $10/hour minimum wage means exactly that - workers are prohibited from accepting offers of employment paying less than $10/hour. After all, workers could always choose not to accept such offers, even without the minimum wage law.

In a property-respecting society (in which the most important property of all is people's property in their own bodies and the labour they perform), no capitalist (or other) employer could ever restrict the range of options open to a worker. When Nike opens a factory in Malaysia, each and every person ending up working in that factory could have chosen to do whatever they would have done if the factory wasn't there in the first place - remain on the family farm or seek any other employment. All Nike did was give those workers one more option.

The libertarian position is that workers will benefit most by having as many options open to them as possible, consistent only with respect for the property (justly-acquired) of others. That is why libertarianism would help workers.

In a capitalist system there will always be incentives for capitalists, and politicians, to blur the line of separation for individual- respective gains.

Which is why I advocate abolition of government or, at the very least, its constitutional exclusion from the economic arena (comparable to its exclusion from that of religion in the US).

If I’m a businessman that finds himself squeezed by some competition, I would find it wonderfully well within my interests to have close friends of mine in the government provide my competitors several new legal challenges to overcome (new business districting laws; added licensure laws; violation of some obscure newly implemented environmental policy etc.). In turn, they would enjoy the benefits of my social-economic influence and power come election time.

Absolutely!

Note, to continue our analogy with religion, that a 17th century thinker could make a similar argument with respect to religious leaders. It will often be in their interest to use their government influence to put legal obstacles in the way of their ideological/theological opponents. And until the 18th century, that was, indeed, an extremely common occurrence.

Nor could anybody familiar with European history reasonably argue that religious leaders didn't enjoy tremendous power of influence over politicians.

Yet the US paved the way, later followed by all western democracies, to effectively divorce government and religion, and leave religion to the "free market" of ideas. The US which embraced this principle more fully than any other country, not coincidently, is by far the most religious of all western democracies.

The exclusion of government from religious affairs can as a result in a change in culture, expectations, ideas within the public. Not because of the pressure of religious leaders, even though, in retrospect, the religious culture in the US benefited greatly from that exclusion.

Similarly, the exclusion of government from the economic arena will not come at the behest of economic leaders (even though it will, in retrospect, greatly promote the economic interests of society). It will come through a change in political culture, expectations and ideas within the public.

Here we don’t have any such guarantee that a, say, Libertarian government would involve ‘less” government than the current mixed capitalism of, say, the U.S. or Britain.

A libertarian government (as opposed to a government run by people merely calling themselves "Libertarians") will, by definition, exclude itself from the economic arena. Most importantly, a democratic government within a society which comes to expect government to stay out of the economic arena would have to do the same.

In just the same way as it would be unthinkable for the US government to secretly channel funds to the Southern Methodist Church, or to enact regulations limiting the ability of Catholics to practice, it would, within the society I am describing, be impossible for government to provide subsidies to General Motors, or enact protective tariffs to place obstacles in the way of their competitors.

Again, I am an anarchist. I do worry about slippery-slope process whereby a small government gradually expands its power and involvement (in the way that the American government has expanded its powers of surveillance and spying in recent years) under the guise of some temporary emergency or crisis.

That is why I would much prefer to have a complete anarchy (in the literal, not figurative sense) whereby no organisation, under any excuse, may initiate force against a person or their (justly-acquired) property.

Yet, such a thing wouldn’t be possible unless there was already in place a system wherein those who gain ownership over the means of production have the chance to expand that ownership and power over employment.

The way you express yourself exposes a fundamental error. You implicitly assume that the means of production are like land - there from time immemorial, and open to a zero-sum-game war over their control.

This is generally not the case, and becoming less and less the case as our society moved, first from agricultural to industrial, then from industrial to knowledge-based focus.

What are the "means of production" in today's America? Sure, there are some vast areas of land used for agricultural production. But that production represents a diminishing fraction of the total value produced by the economy (as well as the number of people employed). Sure, there are large factories out there, with billions invested in capital. But the capital equipment in those factories has to be renewed every few years. The means of production aren't "gained", they are purchased or produced.

But more and more, America's production is in software and entertainment, technical and financial services. In those knowledge industries, "means of production", strictly speaking, represent a tiny fraction of the value produced. A $300 computer and free software can be the "means of production" for a software company.

Even those enterprises that do require more expensive initial investment are open to all. Bank loans are easily available from hundreds of different lenders to any person who can present a credible plan for profitably using the loan for business purposes. Banks would typically require some equity, but only a small fraction of the total amount invested. In many cases, venture capital firms would invest in businesses in which the workers have invested non of their personal assets.

The issue is what gives capitalists the right over others production to begin with? How is capitalism NOT a system wherein the FEW use the many to generate such economic surpluses that they-the FEW-had no direct causal role in bringing about the very goods and services generated by the many?

The simple answer is that if capitalists (who are they in today's society?) had no direct causal role in bringing about the very goods and services generated by the many, why did the many agree to work for the capitalists, rather than for themselves, to begin with?

This is the critical question that all socialists need to answer. If a group of 10 workers produce $1,000,000 of value each year, but are only paid, in aggregate, $400,000 in wages, why did they agree to that employment? Why haven't they simply joined forces and kept the full $1,000,000 in value?

As discussed above, it isn't because the capitalist (especially in the absence of government assistance) could stop them. Why didn't they?

More generally, why does government and workers so value "jobs"? What is a "job", if not the range of valuable contributions that an employer brings to the table, including forwarding wages to workers prior to initial sales, capital equipment, market know-how, reputation associated with a trusted name, management and entrepreneurial skills?

For instance, your example of Wal-Mart is a case in point. It is true that we have the ability, as employees or potential employees, to walk out. Yet, this isn’t a real ECONOMIC POWER per se simply because Wal-Mart OWNES a significant share of the market wherein by the shear fact that they do-they can set the market pricing for all retail stores (keep in mind Wal-Mart produces NOTHING-rather they take and set contract prices for companies and workers who do) and gobble up an enormous share of the labor-market

Market share isn't "owned" by anybody. Market share is the result of the voluntary choices of consumers, and can disappear very quickly. Wal-Mart enjoys a large market share because of the superior value it offers consumers. Having said that, Wal-Mart has many competitors, both large and small. And retailers situated as strongly as Wal-Mart is today found themselves disappearing in the face of new competitors, such as Wal-Mart.

About 20 years ago I worked for a company called D. E. Shaw. With me was another worker who had a great idea - sell books over the Internet. At the time, the book retailing business was overwhelmingly dominated by Barns and Noble. They weren't stupid. They had tons of resources, brand name, relations with publishers, the works. What chance did he have?

The rest, as they say, is history. That one employee, with probably a few hundred dollars in investment, is today the greatest threat to Wal-Mart's domination of the retail market.

So, for example, if you’re a high school graduate with a sick parent your ability to “walk out” will likely be dramatically reduced by means of necessity.

If you're unlucky enough to be a high school graduate with sick parents, you would be much worse off if it weren't for Wal-Mart. You'd probably be out of a job. If you suggest that, absent Wal-Mart, you'd be able to work for a smaller employer who'd pay you more, consider where the extra money really comes from. It doesn't come from Wal-Mart's profits. It comes from the higher prices that the customer of your smaller employer would have to pay. Any system which prohibits or uses force to discourage Wal-Mart is effectively one in which those customers are forced to subsidise our high school graduate.

After all, those customers are always free to bring their business to those smaller stores, or even donate money to Wal-Mart employees. They don't because they don't want to. It would be wrong (as well as economically counter-productive) to force them to do so.

In other words, if we already, as laborers, for example, MUST sell our labor to some owner of production, then that owner does appear to be taking the labor value of our production for himself-a surplus of labor he did nothing to produce directly.

Not at all. We aren't force to sell our labour - we choose to do so, because the employer provides us with the necessary tools for making our labour productive. We engage in a voluntary exchange with the employer by helping each other. Without that employer, our labour would be worthless. With the aid of that employer, our labour is valued by other members of society, who are willing to pay us (indirectly through that employer).



Here is another perspective. Very few of us grow our own food. As people, we must buy our food from the "farmer class" who monopolise food production. And while most people can survive without a job for a few months, very few people can survive without food for more than a few weeks. Further, there are typically many more employment opportunities than there are food-purchasing opportunities. To wit, every supermarket is a potential employer, but not every potential employer sells food.

It seems like the power of the "farmer class" (possibly in collaboration with the class of supermarket owners) is much more awesome than that of the puny capitalists.

Please apply the logic you used to show how much power and control capitalists have to the power and control of the farmer/food distribution class. You will see that it works perfectly.

But somehow none of us seems to feel threatened by the awesome power of supermarkets. We don't feel exploited by them, even though they hold the power of starvation over us. They could, for example, just double the price of all food products, and us poor non-food-growers would have no choice by to pay (under pain of starvation)! No?

[edelker]

Hello Eran:


Eran wrote,

“Fundamentally, individuals have different interests, values and preferences. With that in mind, what is the public good?”


Naturally people do have “individual interests.” This, however, doesn’t seem relevant to whether or not there is such a thing as “public” good or “social interests.” Since one is rationally compatible with the other, there’s no logical problem here.


Also, I, much like most others, do have acknowledged ‘same’ or similar interests: food; good health; self-protection and preservation; education etc. Since no one person can possibly meet these needs for himself or herself—and “others” certainly affect my access of these, and other, interests— with the inclusion of the reality of divided labor, then some ‘social’ system is required to aid in organizing and dispensing the meeting of these “social” or universal goods—however we may choose to collectively define them. I suspect that there’s more here that we can agree on than might initially appear.


Eran wrote,

“Individuals clearly have interests, i.e. goals they value. Those goals may be persona in nature (e.g. having better health or more money), but they can just as easily be communal in nature (e.g. fighting poverty in their community or promoting basic scientific research). The public good is indistinguishable from the combined community-oriented values of individuals.”


OR-community affects the way “individuals” SEE their communities and influences how they motivate their interests. The ‘combined’ community may be influenced and directed by only a handful of ‘others’ or not even people at all. New technologies may become influential in ways that no one person ‘values’ or comprehends-let alone actively supports. Which of these (public or individual) is fundamental isn’t clear. Key groups of dominate others that influence the public may or may not ‘represent’ the interests of that public OR they may convince the ‘public’ that supporting X is better for them than supporting Y when either choice would be atomistically benign. In basic, the public good isn’t entirely indistinguishable from the combined community-oriented values of individuals. Oftentimes, history has shown us that key social leaders and institutions are very good at reversing the order of influence: getting the masses to support the interests of a few while denying themselves the basic needs required for their own survival or meeting their own values. This can, quite naturally, work in reverse as well: a few can also convince the majority to adopt new values that DO enhance individual interests over time: the reality of "public good" may then be had in just this way--just as it is possible for there to be "public threats" or "public ills." The list of possibilities goes on ad infinitum.


In order to make your case at all, you’d have to assume a certain sort of social order already: likely some sort of anarcho-capitalism? Yet, even this sort of approach assumes that those in it are willing to take on the sorts of values and ideas of anarcho-capitalism. As of yet, we have no good reason for thinking this.


Eran wrote,

“Thus if people are interested in fighting poverty or promoting basic scientific research, they are perfectly capable of donating money to charities or research institutions that pursue those goals.”


Maybe they are able and maybe they’re not. Whether a people wants or value something as some sort of aggregate group of individuals is one thing, whether they’re able to accomplish this on their own is quite another. Again, this assumes a view you have in mind-not the reality obviously faced by us now or historically. Nor, even under an anarcho-capitalist social order would this follow. Obviously, even in such an order there would be ‘losers’ in the arena of competition who’s ‘values’ and desires would be denied them.


Eran wrote,


“The term "public good" is used as a cover by politicians and community leaders to promote their individual priorities and values over those of individual members of their respective communities. Thus only if a politician wants, for whatever reason, to provide more funding for a given goal than would be given voluntarily by the public is there a need to label that goal "public good".”


So what? Both on the Left and Right agree that political parties pander to their respective groups while deceiving the general public as to their genuine interests. How some political group or party makes use of a term is irrelevant as to the reality status of what the term represents.


Eran wrote,

“Virtually no conditions, products are services are intrinsically "good". They are "good" in so far (and to the extent) that they are valued by people. “


You’re using the word “intrinsically” in an unclear way here. If you mean that such things (“conditions,” “services” etc.) are not somehow goods as ends in themselves, then you and I have an important philosophical agreement. However, it is utterly irrelevant to the discussion. If you mean, however, something more generic like “essential,” then your point still doesn’t follow. There’s no special conceptual problem between notions like ‘lack’ of social access to food and one’s lack of access to food. If we consider such things even as conceptually- ‘conventionally’ vital, then it still would matter to most—a “most” you’ve already agreed exists in the aggregate, then such things are BOTH vital- or essential- to the individual as well as the social. If we all need food and shelter, for example, it seems odd to argue what is “intrinsic” to either some social thing or some individual thing. It is no feat to see that such things are vital to both sorts of entities regardless of how we may ultimately define them in the end: groups of people desire-value-food as do individuals-for instance; and such entities can both starve without it equally.


Eran wrote,

“Only individuals can value things. Societies, communities, nations or countries do not have independent thinking and decision-making abilities. The "public good" is really a short-hand for "Mr. X's opinion as to the public good".”


Well, even according to your own confession that there is a relationship between individuals and social, it hardly follows that the “public good” is ONLY a short-hand for “Mr.X’s opinion as to ect. It may be—or it may not be! After all, if one person can define and enforce some notion of “public good” on the majority (which is possible in my view-and, after analysis, yours too as we’ve seen), then, quite plausibly, the majority MAY well define what the public good is too. There’s nothing in what you’ve written to deny this possibility. If so, and it certainly can be so, then groups of individuals CAN value certain things.


By the way, whether such things require ‘independence’ of thought and decision making is irrelevant to whether or not groups of people can collectively value the same sorts of things. This is an obvious biased and ideological requirement. The idea of independence of thought is already presupposed by the volitional acts of choice groups of people make in this context. Demanding some weird ‘independence’ cognition of the group is wholly absurd as it is irrelevant.


Eran wrote,

“That is why it makes sense to place the focus of questions of value, good, preference at the individual rather than either a higher (community, society) or lower (cells, organs) level of aggregation.”


I think I’ve showed that this sort of conclusion need not follow even from your own arguments.


Eran wrote,

“hope I showed you why I believe the reductionist view is not merely the only correct one, it is the only meaningful one.”


No-not really. Again, you MUST show that there’s no reciprocal sort of causality in the relations involved here. You’ve only told us why you prefer one over the other and not that only one view is the only meaningful one. Obviously, when examining such history as Nazi Germany, the reductionist view makes little sense-since we know from the tomes of recorded evidence that people were converted by the social influences involved. If you mean that this ‘meaning’ is the only normative view we ought to accept, then we still await for that case to be made. But nothing you’ve stated so far comes close to showing your view as the only meaningful one in the former sense.


Eran wrote,

“In other words, the public good is always reduced to the value preferences of individuals. The only question is whether those are all members of the community, each acting and making decisions for themselves, or those of a handful of leaders, whether they excuse their choices be rhetorically appealing to the "public good" or not.”


Exactly! However, as your point herein admits, I think rather unwittingly so, that groups CAN decide and define the public good. The issue is only whether the people, via their own individual choices, are doing so or some leader with nefarious-or self-serving- motives. If so, then there’s also nothing to prohibit the group or the social from swaying large numbers of individuals to some notion of the ‘public’ good. These influences need not come from one direction or from some one or two people. Reductionism means it can only work in one direction. Very clearly, such things don’t and need not do so in ways that reductionists argue.


On the more broad ontological argument, you haven’t yet established why the”individual” isn’t an equally confusing conventional reality. To make your case work in the end, it would seem reasonable to first show what is meant by such a thing and how it, then, ought to be equally fundamental to political theory. You appear to assume the answer here on grounds of what seems, to you, to "work" or make better sense. However, none of these above reasons given, and all too briefly stated, are arguments-only seeming ideological fetishes.


Eran wrote,

“Socialists (especially those with anarchist rather than statist bend) try to argue that a worker's choice to accept a given employment isn't "really" voluntary, because that worker's choices are strictly limited. The analogy is the "choice" of "your money or your life" given by a robber to the robbed. Obviously, this isn't "really" a voluntary choice.”


This isn’t what properly informed socialists argue. It is true that we argue that choices are limited for the worker. But such a fact is a corollary of a systemic order that coerces and thus endorses a set of market relations that are not part and parcel of the same sort of relation (market ownership). The “wage,” for example, is not a cooperative element in the wealth-producing order not just because it denies choices to the laborer, but because it is a necessary element for a socially created system to continue to benefit others who do not create the market worth of that labor. It is this class structure that creates the conflict inherent in the system. The classes are defined by that social ordering of ownership. Those who are the owners in the system DO have some interest in maintaining that system and may, at some level and in some way, eventually coerce the distinction between owners of production and those that MUST sell their labor to meet their basic needs. Certain choices do exist in the system FOR certain classes and not for others. Not that "choice" is wholly removed from the worker, however. Limitations are but part of the problem-they are symptomatic (albeit important to the analysis)-not causal.


Eran wrote,

“In this context, then, it is important that we not only acknowledge the limited range of options available to the worker, but also analyse the source of those limits.Some limits are inherent in the nature of reality. People need food, and food doesn't grow on trees (well, some foods do, but you understand what I mean). Work must be done to create the basic needs that people first have to have to survive, and then really want to have to live well (by the changing standards of society).”


No socialist disagrees with this! The issue is that the capitalist argues that he has right to the market value of your labor. There’s nothing that capitalists DO to earn that right! It is given to them by law, custom, or some other social set of arrangements. They require mass labor to produce the surpluses of value that they DON’T THEMSELVES PRODUCE! The reason a capitalist can acquire mass wealth is because he/she lives within a social system that legally-or in some social manner-forces or allows an owner of production to expropriate the value-labor of others. GE’s wealth comes from a set of social relations that allows corporations to extract the labor muscle and mental talents of others in order to sell the products of that labor for values that the owners (CEO’s-shareholders ect.) did nothing themselves to directly create. Yes, they contributed investment wealth, though, again, wealth extracted from other workers, investments, and market values extracted from, still, others. In the end, the final market consumer commodities are all done my thousands, if not millions, of laborers who will have no rights to the things they produce. This isn’t a natural system by any means.


Eran wrote,

“Unless you advocate having some people parasitically living off the (involuntarily-extracted) labour of others, every person needs to either work and produce to support themselves, or rely on the charitable voluntary assistance of others.”


Yet, and from a socialist point of view, the whole point is that in a capitalist system NOT EVERYONE works and produces to support themselves! That’s the whole goal and point of the system: to extract the labor from multiple-others in order to sell the products they create and keep the market value for oneself, which will be worth more to the owner than the wages paid out to the laborers. The wages may or may not be tied to profits. As a result, it is this very arrangment that allows for the owner to keep wages flat, thus making it irrelevant for you-the wage earner- to work more and produce more, in order to increase profits. The whole goal is to earn by means of others labor. The worker doesn't CLEARLY consent to this sort of arrangement any more than he CLEARLY did to a state-capitalist system of parasites that live off the labor of others (most versions of 20th century Communism).


Eran wrote,

“But many limits on people's range of choices as to how to produce and support themselves are artificial, man-made. Many people could, for example, offer services as a taxi-driver. Objectively, nothing is required beyond owning a car. But government regulations make such employment very difficult, as the number of licensed taxi drivers is often strictly limited. Virtually all labour regulations, properly understood, have the effect, even if not always the intent, of limiting the range of choices open to workers. A $10/hour minimum wage means exactly that - workers are prohibited from accepting offers of employment paying less than $10/hour. After all, workers could always choose not to accept such offers, even without the minimum wage law.”


Again, no disagreement from informed socialists. Indeed, a government that attempts to manage capitalism’s many failures to meet people’s needs will fail to maintain the integrity of the very capitalistic order it purportedly values. All are agreed. If the government’s job is to ensure that people’s needs are met and some businesses receive financial breaks, then how such a government will respect market choices, successes, and arrangements will be both unclear and, in the end, distort economic progress. Again, this isn’t our issue! You’re debating Keynesian economic theory here-not socialism. Socialism is about a government of the people; it is not about that government upholding some quasi-social-capitalist goal of health and wealth economics. For socialism, the economic order and the governmental order are owned by the people-NOT THE PUBLIC OR THE MARKET! Socialism is no more about state control than it is about capitalist-market control.


Eran wrote,

“In a property-respecting society (in which the most important property of all is people's property in their own bodies and the labour they perform), no capitalist (or other) employer could ever restrict the range of options open to a worker. When Nike opens a factory in Malaysia, each and every person ending up working in that factory could have chosen to do whatever they would have done if the factory wasn't there in the first place - remain on the family farm or seek any other employment. All Nike did was give those workers one more option.”


You’re mixing up issues. One, “property” for the socialist isn’t about some sort of restriction on the range of options open to the worker! Rather, socialism deals with (and had been the case even BEFORE MARX) what property is and how property is used to “structure the social order” as well as dealing with the various justifications for doing so. For socialists, workers are not- technically speaking –slaves. In other words, a man will seek several options to meet out his needs. In capitalism, labor will have several options to acquire work and to move to other employment if one can. There are open options under capitalism for labor that hardly existed under other sorts of economic arrangements. Once more Eran, you’re dealing with a micro-economic issue irrelevant to socialism and its critiques of capitalism. Socialism is about macro-changes in dealing with the overall set of relations that compose capitalism. You keep addressing Keynesian points of view. If Marxism and other forms of socialism were this oversimplified, it would be a mystery, indeed, as to why anyone would bother with socialism as a separate macro-economic theory. Obviously, this isn’t the case!


So, whether or not we can intelligently speak of “property” is, for the socialist, a far separate issue from whether or not Keynesian economic theory validly expands or contracts workers choices.


Also, to be clear, my criticism in the previous post wasn’t about what occurs, here and there, in capitalism-but rather capitalism’s goal! The fact that Nike allows for workers in some place to have more options is, once more, wholly irrelevant as to what Nike’s overall market goal is! It is important to keep all of these moving pieces as straight as possible.


Eran wrote,

“The libertarian position is that workers will benefit most by having as many options open to them as possible, consistent only with respect for the property (justly-acquired) of others. That is why libertarianism would help workers.”


They could-yes. But there’s not only NO guarantee of this under Libertarianism-but the opposite is far likelier, just as history has shown. Again, the only guarantee anyone has under this system is contingent on the rather frail notion of a “respect for property” social order. Four problems: (1) few, myself included, are not quite comfortable with the logical consequence of this reasoning. We are free to pursue the means required to fulfill our own needs and desires. The only caveat being that we MUST respect others and their property-ownership ONLY. But such a criterion is too minimal to be the robust view of liberty most of us have. So, while I’m free to pursue the means necessary to fulfill my needs and desires, I MUST do so within the narrow limits of what other people own and what they may rightly deny me. This logically must mean that liberty is defined by “property ownership.” My means are equal to what I have, including my abilities. Those with more property and market ability will have greater liberty and greater liberty still to fulfill their needs and wants. Those with no property and little ability will have no liberty or even potential to gain it. This is a view that reduces the notion of liberty to things we have and can “work” to own. This view doesn’t see liberty as something prior to ownership-but rather, and unfortunately, as something integral to it. But such a view logically supports rather narrow autocratic views of liberty (like we find in Locke and Hamilton) and rejects views of liberty that most of us have when we ponder the concept “Liberty,” a natural right or something we all ought to have due to the sorts of being that we are regardless of race, creed, intelligence, sexual orientation, or economic status. Once the market gets going, the limited resources and labor resources quickly close doors to opportunities. The very logic of your own position not only leads to this-but states it explicitly! I don’t think most would think this to be the best choice we have when it comes to ideas of freedom and liberty. At least I hope not.


(2) Given your own view, combined with what was stated by me prior, we know this view cannot hold-or if it did-it wouldn’t for long. Your view states that there are limited resources, abilities, inequalities in starting points, and the like. Eventually, those who can and have a mind and interest in gobbling up as much of the economic resources as possible, along with the available labor resources at some specific economic time, over the many who have utterly NO interest in market matters whatsoever- would own the bulk of the “social” order (since, quite logically, the social order is structured in just the economic way you support). This inequality of resources, abilities, work ethic, variety of interests and so on guarantees that if the social order is to be governed by owners of productive private property, a few key interested people would be the winners over the rest. In such a competitive system losers are part of the process. Workers who lose out will also find fewer resources open to them as the winners gain an ever increasing portion of the current economic resources over which the market can manage. Not all can be winners! Not all will own anything! Non-owners could hardly be in the position to bargain with those who do own. The worker owns nothing but his own labor over which he must sell to one of the current owners-or go it alone. In any case and in the end analysis, the system is NOT about liberty-it’s about those who own and how the results would wind up increasing the liberties of those who own against those who do not. Otherwise, what would be the point of having the bulk of the market or aiming for it from a businessman’s point of view? There wouldn’t be any! The ambitious, under your view, still has a means to gain and control key economic resources that others may require to meet their needs and to fulfill their interests. The fact that this is a logical possibility from your own position-makes such anarcho-capitalism an undesirable bet!


Yes, others would have non-market interests-but since our needs and survival will depend on our property status, our interests and needs will have to be tailored to who owns the resources and what options we’ll have to take our labor and property to negotiate the conditions we deem necessary for our lives to be fulfilled. At the end of the day, most will have to sell their labor, suspend their individual interests, and ‘work’ for another who will, by means of wage-income, determine where we live, how well we will be educated, or what kinds of foods we’ll be able to afford. When the social-natural order is divvied up by capitalist-market forces, some will have more-others simply will have none. How this opens the door to increasing options is a mystery. The only way it holds is if options are held constant with population increases and decreases and economic growth. But we know this to be impossible in capitalist markets for rather obvious reasons for which your own position already recognizes.


(3) This position holds in so far as people ‘decide’ to remain “respectful” of property rights. Neither the capitalists nor the worker has any long term incentive to hold to this strict line of economic requirement. If, for example, I’m extremely successful over my market-geographical domain, I’ll likely not take kindly to some innovative capitalist who would appear to start eating away at my market. If I could form some legal-solution or council or whatever non-market means to stop him, it would be in my interest to do so. Moreover, I would have even greater reason to do so if I had, for whatever reason, the support of the people.


The worker also wouldn’t care for this long term. After all, if the only rule is respect of others property, and I find that my place of work is moving abroad, I might be encouraged to find work elsewhere-or I might simply see it within my immediate interests to organize politically and FORCE the plant or whatever-to stay. At the end of the day, the extra-market social forces will only work in so far as people’s natural inclinations and incentives would allow. In this Libertarian view, in the end, neither the owner of production nor the worker would find it always, or even arguably at all, within their interests to remain dedicated to “free-market” ideology when there are far better reasons to forgo such ideology in the pursuit of self-interests.


(4) You’ve nowhere explained what private property is and how something is “justly acquired,” let alone why we ought to have these things. Merely saying that such things promise to do X says nothing as to what such things are or why we ought to value them at all. Before we organize an entire social order around such a thing, let’s get clear on what “it” is.


Eran wrote,


“Note, to continue our analogy with religion, that a 17th century thinker could make a similar argument with respect to religious leaders. It will often be in their interest to use their government influence to put legal obstacles in the way of their ideological/theological opponents. And until the 18th century, that was, indeed, an extremely common occurrence. Nor could anybody familiar with European history reasonably argue that religious leaders didn't enjoy tremendous power of influence over politicians. Yet the US paved the way, later followed by all western democracies, to effectively divorce government and religion, and leave religion to the "free market" of ideas. The US which embraced this principle more fully than any other country, not coincidently, is by far the most religious of all western democracies. The exclusion of government from religious affairs can as a result in a change in culture, expectations, ideas within the public. Not because of the pressure of religious leaders, even though, in retrospect, the religious culture in the US benefited greatly from that exclusion. Similarly, the exclusion of government from the economic arena will not come at the behest of economic leaders (even though it will, in retrospect, greatly promote the economic interests of society). It will come through a change in political culture, expectations and ideas within the public.”


Four things: One, this misses the above point entirely. I wasn’t making an argument about ‘how’ some capitalists behave by using their government to their advantage. Obviously, ANY ideology or other social force would, and has, done this! Not the point. The point is that both the politician and the capitalist have shared reasons for mixing their respective domains: the interests of both, in a capitalist system, are often one and the same-often by one and the same group. Two, this isn’t in any way similar to that of the religious situation historically. Religion and religious ideas MAY involve power systems, or they may not. Political systems cannot do without economic systems-and it was my argument that capitalists find it far more natural for them to have a favorable and active political system.


Also, it was the LAW, see our Constitution, that made religion a personal matter,i.e., FORCED religion to a secondary optional -personal issue. I don’t think you wish to carry this analogy too far-unless you wish to also discuss the many-many laws and court cases that have been made in this country attempting to uphold such a “right” and freedom of and from religion. For our Founders to legally establish that religion would not be State sponsored created and called for a whole history and body of law to made regulating the relation between the two. So, if we carry this analogy to its logical conclusion, you’re calling for the government to force markets and itself to behave privately and separately-and, as a result, force the rest of us to obey this new capitalist order upheld by the force of a gun?? Surely not!


As a side note, if I were you I would become much more familiar with how religion and its ideas have and are currently influencing U.S. policy both Federally and at the state-level. Just this past week N.C. was trying to pass a law establishing a state religion. The debate on this issue is far from settled. The law and the courts are still attempting to clarify this very amendment.


Thirdly, religious ideas are in plenty because of OUR LAW and because it neither hurts nor helps depending on who you ask. No such thing is the case for capitalism. When owners decide to move, include some new labor-saving technology, or simply merge with another making competition more difficult, this directly impacts us objectively and in ways that don’t necessarily add diversity to the market.


Fourth, you’re, once more, debating a Keynesian point. It’s not my interest to argue about how government relates to business. This isn’t the ultimate interests of the socialists. IT’s important to know the difference.


Eran wrote,

“In just the same way as it would be unthinkable for the US government to secretly channel funds to the Southern Methodist Church, or to enact regulations limiting the ability of Catholics to practice, it would, within the society I am describing, be impossible for government to provide subsidies to General Motors, or enact protective tariffs to place obstacles in the way of their competitors.”


It clearly wouldn’t be impossible! Well, unless you would wish to enforce it by law! Clearly, it could happen and likely would for reasons I’ve already expounded. But, once again, this isn’t what the socialist is arguing.


Eran wrote,

“Again, I am an anarchist. I do worry about slippery-slope process whereby a small government gradually expands its power and involvement (in the way that the American government has expanded its powers of surveillance and spying in recent years) under the guise of some temporary emergency or crisis. That is why I would much prefer to have a complete anarchy (in the literal, not figurative sense) whereby no organisation, under any excuse, may initiate force against a person or their (justly-acquired) property.”


So, you do support coercion to protect a person and his property? Yes? If not, then why can’t I just take it from you with my gang of twelve? Who cares if I violated your property rights besides you? Or is it all against all? Do you support some state ability to protect these basic rights? If not, then who would care about property rights? If so, then all the possibility of government involvement will depend wholly on how well the people will respond to such incentives. As already pointed out, I see no reason why worker and capitalist alike would want the Libertarian view at all when there’s far more to be gained by both by NOT having such a so-called anarchic order.


Eran wrote,

“The way you express yourself exposes a fundamental error. You implicitly assume that the means of production are like land - there from time immemorial, and open to a zero-sum-game war over their control. This is generally not the case, and becoming less and less the case as our society moved, first from agricultural to industrial, then from industrial to knowledge-based focus. What are the "means of production" in today's America? Sure, there are some vast areas of land used for agricultural production. But that production represents a diminishing fraction of the total value produced by the economy (as well as the number of people employed). Sure, there are large factories out there, with billions invested in capital. But the capital equipment in those factories has to be renewed every few years. The means of production aren't "gained", they are purchased or produced.”



The expression of mine you highlighted is as common an expression to classical political economy as it is to Marxism. Means of production in Marxian terms isn’t always identical with the concrete objects of labor: like land or capital equipment. In basic, the means of production is simply the actual and available labor resources used to generate products and services into surpluses. The workers who produce the surplus and the appropriators/distributors are different people than those who appropriate (gets) that surplus and who then distributes that surplus in ways designed to reproduce the system. Obviously, these relationships can move, expand and develop in numerous ways. In this, and in traditional economic contexts, there’s little difficulty in the meaning of these terms. Whatever the amount or the identity of the objects involved in the means of production and owners of production may be at any given time- there are, nonetheless, distinct relationships between these market players.


Hence, there are markets that own lager shares of the CURRENT labor market than other markets. Quite obviously this ownership changes as does the expansion, identity, and nature of labor changes over economic time. Why this appears to be odd or strange to you is uncertain. Such a fact seems as obvious to economics as noses are to faces.



Eran wrote,


“The simple answer is that if capitalists (who are they in today's society?) had no direct causal role in bringing about the very goods and services generated by the many, why did the many agree to work for the capitalists, rather than for themselves, to begin with?”


They didn’t agree! What arguments do you have to show that labor had or made some sort of choice to work for capitalists?


Besides, such a question avoids my inquiry! Regardless if workers chose this relationship, which they didn’t, or not, it still doesn’t bode well for the capitalist argument of “just acquisition.” They still didn’t earn it. A person choosing to become a slave is one thing, rightly laying claim to the products of slavery is another. If the capitalist obtained the wealth by means of another’s labor, then he/she by definition didn’t earn it! It doesn’t matter who agreed to what. Does capitalism justify itself by voluntary agreement or by just acquisition? If just acquisition is, or can be, the same as ‘nothing but voluntary economic-social arrangements,’ then you cannot mean that capitalism is about one keeping or earning what one produces! If it is just for me to use slave labor in as long as all are agreed, then capitalism can be as accommodating to social parasites as any welfare-state. While the two may differ in their relation to the central notion of voluntarism, they are nonetheless indistinguishable in terms of means and ends. Both use other’s labor to create something for themselves that they-themselves didn’t create or earn.


Eran wrote,

“This is the critical question that all socialists need to answer. If a group of 10 workers produce $1,000,000 of value each year, but are only paid, in aggregate, $400,000 in wages, why did they agree to that employment? Why haven't they simply joined forces and kept the full $1,000,000 in value? As discussed above, it isn't because the capitalist (especially in the absence of government assistance) could stop them.”


LOL! Yes they do and can! I can unfold for you the rather long story of how capitalists have spent a whole history in order to set labor policy, tell tales of literal bloodshed that labor had to fight in order to get basic rights to negotiate, and of many-many stories of union busting and threats made against labor for even daring to collectively discuss possibilities of bringing in democratic principles to the workplace. It has happened this month, this week, and today in dozens of places. Labor in entire nations have fought for such revolution! The history on this subject composes a whole disciplines in many colleges. How this history has evaded you is beyond me.


But at least since the time of Marx we’ve already known that people are subject to and heavily influenced by the norms, institutional teachings of their culture etc. These social forces are often used to rationalize the current order. When Darwin’s theory came out, it was a smack in the face of the uppity-sexually suppressed Victorian England. Yet, in just a few short years, mainstream thinkers and even major religious institutions began to fit the theory into the general rationale of the times. Herbert Spencer, one who Darwin found no agreement with, for example, used Darwin’s biological theory to rationalize the socio-economic order of the day. The same history can be said of Freud. Further back when the Hellenic Classics were rediscovered by Medieval Europe, numerous adaptations were made of the ancient philosophers (especially Aristotle) to rationalize the socio-ecclesiastical order of the times. There’s simply nothing new here.


Socialists have little problem explaining why many laborers in an economic tradition that has dominated and structured their culture for more than three-hundred years would “choose” a capitalist arrangement over some alternative. Our law, social organizations, many of our churches, key teachers, a major political party and its many advocates all support and speak out for it. To pretend that such labor decisions are made in some sort of voluntaristic vacuum is just that: pretending!


Eran wrote,

“What is a "job", if not the range of valuable contributions that an employer brings to the table,”


Or, rather the range of value that a society of consumers, educated labor, and capital investment freely provided to the employer. Even the basic material "stuff"an employer uses is usually gotten by means other than what the employer directly provides-usually money the community has lent him with their earnings (called business loans via local banks) or investors (also money borrowed from others who borrowed still from deposits that investment banks did nothing to earn). Lots of ways to get the public’s money, labor resources, and other equipment that NO capitalist ever produced or created himself! He used “social” wealth because there’s NO other way he could have done it. He used the wealth provided him to make his own from it. In fact, most food service industries work in this way and ALL your major corporate industries work like this. None spend a dime from their own pockets-they can get it from the public via private institutions or through government subsidies—or getting individual people to fund it (again, like you see in much food service industries). Largely small time businesses operate like this and while there are far more of them than larger businesses, they contribute far smaller portions of wealth to the overall GDP, provide lower wages generally, and often fail within the first five years. That’s real capitalism: most of what people do will fail!



Eran wrote,

“market know-how, reputation associated with a trusted name, management and entrepreneurial skills?”


Since the largest and most successful businesses rely heavily on government subsidies and bailouts due to bad-short-sighted economic interests, I fail to see “market know how” here. A system that fails so often that economists have developed a word, and study, for it (business cycles) isn’t that great or ideal! Again, you’re relying on an image that doesn’t exist in the business norm. Small businesses that are like this fail more often than the giants have. The entrepreneurial model can only be idealized in this rather exaggerated romantic fashion for the rest of us to ignore it as a gross failure for most who attempt it and for those workers who lose their jobs because of it! Not very convincing.


Eran wrote,

“Market share isn't "owned" by anybody.”


Umm…there are market domains that are known as “shares” of the market and are used in business and economics quite often by all ideological stripes. It’s rather easy to calculate this for both labor within a market and the entirety of the market (one may use shares of GDP as an example). We can calculate the wealth, receipts, number of laborers, regions that Wal-Mart occupies, the total number of retailors that it had and match that against other competing markets of the same kind. This isn’t hard to do. Indeed, such markets can be lost via competition, economic downturns etc. but the fact that one runs the market of retail or finance or what have you for some time, and greatly influences the overall economic pace is an accepted economic fact by all. I’m not saying anything controversial here. But ownership of large shares of the market is a fact of markets.


Eran wrote,


“Market share is the result of the voluntary choices of consumers, and can disappear very quickly.”


Nope! Not how it happened at all! Consumers of Wal-Mart-like Exxon-Mobile are byproducts-not causal. Wal-Mart got its start in an age when low-cost marketing of products for manufacturers were unheard of or practiced in a very different way than today. At the time, most makers of products had to open up their own shops to sell their wares. They could negotiate with certain retail chains, but even many of these produced and sold their own goods. Or, retail stores were localized and wanted a decent share of the profits. Wal-Mart started out by getting such businesses to make contracts with them to sell their products in their (Wal-Mart) stores at very low contract costs. At the time this sounded like a great idea! After all, it costs a fortune to not only produce these goods and services but to showcase them, hire sales teams, rent or buy storefronts etc. Wal-Mart started low on the contract bids. Then, as the chain grew, again largely due to such low-cost novelty, Wal-Mart began to demand higher prices on contracts! Since Wal-Mart had a much larger market and ability to show your products, businesses had little choice than to meet Wal-Mart’s demands. With the added revenue, they bought more stores and made more contracts. Naturally, they could keep costs down drowning out any local competition. Many producers, however, either moved overseas to find cheap labor or cut costs in benefits to their employees. In the end, Wal-Mart negotiated with foreign producers forcing further downward pressure on producers here to cut costs even more in order to do business with an increasingly large and demanding giant.


Naturally customers came! But they did so ONLY AFTER and BECAUSE such shopping options best fit the overall shrinking incomes of working Americans and competitors were either reduced in number or entirely wiped out (for example, in my town, there’s five Wal-Marts and just two other competing chains). Wal-Mart appealed to larger segments of the market because it could force companies to sell to a national audience or go it regionally to some Meyer’s store. Customers influence here came after the fact! Not before. Business models are often being surmised in like fashion in order to manipulate the potential consumer gains without having to actually compete for such profits in the market place!


Eran wrote,

“About 20 years ago I worked for a company called D. E. Shaw. With me was another worker who had a great idea - sell books over the Internet. At the time, the book retailing business was overwhelmingly dominated by Barns and Noble. They weren't stupid. They had tons of resources, brand name, relations with publishers, the works. What chance did he have?”


Never heard of em! But even if I had, I would rather go to Barnes and Noble. The fact is everyone knows this chain and it will likely always be on top-or on top for some time! Those with the name and the access will always dominate!


But even if it doesn’t, it says nothing at all about the relationship between labor-wage and owners of production! How well or long a capitalist holds onto the market is irrelevant to the fact that there are different economic relationships to who owns what. You still haven’t provided any reason why such owners over the market ought to be so and the vast majority MUST live accordingly to market forces and structure.


Eran wrote,

“If you're unlucky enough to be a high school graduate with sick parents, you would be much worse off if it weren't for Wal-Mart. You'd probably be out of a job.”


One, this isn’t necessarily true! If companies like Wal-Mart weren’t driving down labor costs and drying up local competition, then one could just as well argue the opposite!


Secondly, so what? How does this sort of economic arrangement justify the sort of economic-social system you’re advocating for? Because it’s better than dying? This is your answer?


Thirdly, go back and re-read the context, once more I was dealing with the notion of employee negotiation power and freedom-not whether or not I, and my sick parent, would do better with Wal-Mart’s cheap wages and no-health benefits!


Eran wrote,

“If you suggest that, absent Wal-Mart, you'd be able to work for a smaller employer who'd pay you more, consider where the extra money really comes from. It doesn't come from Wal-Mart's profits. It comes from the higher prices that the customer of your smaller employer would have to pay.”


Nonsense! If companies like Wal-Mart weren’t driving producers to find ever cheaper labor, spreading hard to compete against giant chains, and influencing like businesses to do the same in order to compete, wage-incomes wouldn’t fall! If incomes increase with demand, then the local shop owner may charge more for his/her products, but such products will be affordable regardless because of the standard income-pace would be relatively stable with the standard of living and overall rates of inflation. When enough large businesses are able to force labor costs down, the surplus generated from all to the rather large business operations, CEO pay, shareholders pay, and so on-only works to reduce the general public’s ability to meet needs, which, in turn, practically means less overall economic opportunity for the majority to use to expand economically. This is, by the way, exactly what we’re seeing across the national board!


Eran wrote,

“Any system which prohibits or uses force to discourage Wal-Mart is effectively one in which those customers are forced to subsidise our high school graduate.”


Who, besides-perhaps you, is arguing about forcing anyone? Again, you’re arguing against a caricature of socialism. Or, once again, you may be arguing against Keynesian economics? Our view doesn’t support coercive actions in any way like this.


Eran wrote,

“Not at all. We aren't force to sell our labour - we choose to do so, because the employer provides us with the necessary tools for making our labour productive. We engage in a voluntary exchange with the employer by helping each other. Without that employer, our labour would be worthless. With the aid of that employer, our labour is valued by other members of society, who are willing to pay us (indirectly through that employer).”


This, then, explains nothing. How do you explain that if everything is but a free-will set of cooperative negotiations, that there’s an immense conflict between employer and employees; between consumer and producer; between unionized labor and owners; between political bodies, business and workers; why is there rather large appeal in all developed nations to political parties that overtly support labor against owners of capital; why is there a long historical battle, sometimes literally, between these groups of people?? Your view explains none of this! Why do I resent my employer who made two-years of profit and still hasn’t given us a raise? Are we being selfish babies? We’ve tried to find other work-but couldn't! Are millions and billions of people merely deceived my anti-capitalist rhetoric that we’re all unable to see that we freely want no healthcare, no higher wages, employers that verbally mistreat and mismanage us? Are we just psychologically motivated by envy and self-loathing that we can’t see what we really want is this reality of an underpaid and overworked life—and only fellas like you are able to teach us about our deepest psychology? When I see my CEO sit at home and do nothing while I bring him two-million dollars in contracts-and yet I see none of that for myself-while he took a raise of three-hundred thousand last year, am I just being cranky and blinded by not seeing his wonderful contributions of sitting in a twenty room home and having us handle, quite literally, all his work? What explains this embedded tension universally acknowledged, felt and written large in tomes of history?


Obviously, this view you’ve stated here too is, with all due respect, absurd! Our employer provides us with the ability to make HIM money (capital)! The wages he pays us is a means to keep low the actual worth of our labor so he can make a market-profit. He couldn’t give you the full value of your labor and still make a profit!


We’re already productive. I don’t need, nor did humanity for countless millennia, require a capitalist to provide us the means to be productive. Humankind was always this! My interests here aren’t the same as my employer. I’m no more helping my employer than I’m “helping” my local supermarket with paying their bills! Selfish-interests are driving the whole of the system. If my employer could replace me with a cheaper more effective machine, so much for me! Likewise, if I could get by without him, so much for “helping” my employer. Human labor had always been valuable without THAT EMPLOYER taking our work from us to make a profit he didn’t earn—and most likely he provided us with means to produce these products and services without having to pay for them himself. So, in the end, your argument still fails to note the fact that the employer can only increase his wealth by use of our labor! It seems rather obvious he needs US more than we require him! Humankind had done just fine throughout much of its history without the guidance of owners of capital! The issue, then, and, again, is what is the justification for this arrangement since nothing you’ve argued here shows that either the laborer or the owner could make do without the other. If capitalism is a system of cooperative arrangements, why is it that only one part of this arrangement gets to own, arrange, and decide on how to dispense with the cooperatively produced wealth we’ve all created? This question is especially relevant when we consider that most large successful owners (or directors) of business neither started the businesses they now own and /or run nor participate in the labor process.


The socialist approach makes sense of this rather apparent historical, personal, and socio-political situation. In short, the reason you and past capitalist generations have felt used, is, well, because you were and are! Your view simply explains none of this or must opt for some odd view that attempts to explain such things by way of blaming our misdirected perceptions. If all of this were simply a case of poor economic vision, then it seems you could more persuasively argue the position so we could see straight. We are valuable members of society with or without some capitalist order to help us realize it! With all of us and the socialized reality of wealth-production, capitalism can exist! Without labor FOR money, we all would still create value through our labor, but the capitalist would cease to exist. Labor has and can exist without capitalism or its supposed benefits. But capitalists cannot exist without labor. It seems we need no such corrective lenses here. I think we see just fine. Unless, once more, you can argue just how we’re better because our employers make us so! More to the point-simply justify this order over the one being offered here-that would be a nice starting place.


Eran wrote,


“Here is another perspective. Very few of us grow our own food. As people, we must buy our food from the "farmer class" who monopolise food production. And while most people can survive without a job for a few months, very few people can survive without food for more than a few weeks. Further, there are typically many more employment opportunities than there are food-purchasing opportunities. To wit, every supermarket is a potential employer, but not every potential employer sells food. t seems like the power of the "farmer class" (possibly in collaboration with the class of supermarket owners) is much more awesome than that of the puny capitalists. Please apply the logic you used to show how much power and control capitalists have to the power and control of the farmer/food distribution class. You will see that it works perfectly. But somehow none of us seems to feel threatened by the awesome power of supermarkets. We don't feel exploited by them, even though they hold the power of starvation over us. They could, for example, just double the price of all food products, and us poor non-food-growers would have no choice by to pay (under pain of starvation)! No? ”


LOL! Accept that agriculture in most industrial societies are and have been capitalistic. However, and to your point, many, arguably most, DO feel threatened by their employers! If I cross mine, for example, I’m out the door! Most Americans find that our banks and investment banks are too powerful-too big and still threaten to sink the economy further! Yes, if you look at studies done on this subject you will find that most dislike their jobs, feel threatened by their employers, and many would say they think they’re exploited as well. But even if we couldn't produce any of this, you are once again are getting the subject far off track. Whether a slave “feels” threatened by his master or not says nothing whatsoever about the legitimacy or justification of the institution of slavery itself. Slaves may like their condition. They may enjoy their masters even. They may find their worth in the very work they have to perform! But if a slave owner attempts to justify slavery he will have to do better than giving us his opinions about the subjective feelings of those in bondage-or citing cases wherein some slaves report possessing self-realized worth in their forced labor. He will have to justify, make some sort of coherent and cogent argument for slavery’s rightness--most importantly, against its critics. As of yet, you’ve left more questions than answers and given no clear reason to accept capitalism as a system of free-will exchanges built on the acceptance by all to the ownership, organization, and distribution of the surplus. You’ve said nothing about just acquisition. In fact, you've only stated what the system is to you-but you haven’t done much else. This leaves your view rationally unclear. It hardly resonates with historical reality or personal experience seemingly and objectively attested to wherever capitalism is THE dominant economic system.


Perhaps, start by discussing socialism and leave the usual conflations with Keynesianism in the capitalist playbook at home.


Have to run,


Eric D.

[Rothbardian]

Where did I argue that capitalists "are the enemy"?

How do you have an "oppression" button when both capitalists AND voters can use it for their own advantage?

What you're not saying is that citizens will vote for government that support capitalists, with the first providing tax cuts and the second easy credit.

But does this mean that there's no exploitation and that capitalists are helpless? Not at all! With tax cuts and easy credit, citizens are able to purchase a middle class lifestyle, but that increasing debt will soon catch up with them.

Finally, are you saying that "milking it for all its worth" is the same as buying or controlling?

Easy. Voters oppress other voters by using the government. People who want what their neighbors have, or do not like certain behaviors and want them removed, can vote for using the guns and bombs of the state to threaten the lives of those who disagree with them. Everyone gets to do this. You can call them capitalists and pretend they have hooves and fangs the way you obviously do but that doesn't make it any less right or wrong.

The trouble is all a voter has for collateral is his or her vote. People with money can simply buy political prostitutes to much greater effect. The politician/whore will do his/her best to appease both, but that usually means lieing to the voter and pocketing the money. Sorry, I mean 'campaign funds'.

All going completely socialist does is change the oppression from being influenced by money to being influenced by political clout. Instead of having to bribe politicians, you simply have to brown nose them into oppressing your competitors or giving you perks. That or simply rise within the ranks of the mafia itself. By mafia I mean socialist regime, obviously.

[edelker]

Rothbardian:


Again, I just wish to toss my two cents in here.



Rothbardian wrote,

“Easy. Voters oppress other voters by using the government. People who want what their neighbors have, or do not like certain behaviors and want them removed, can vote for using the guns and bombs of the state to threaten the lives of those who disagree with them. Everyone gets to do this. You can call them capitalists and pretend they have hooves and fangs the way you obviously do but that doesn't make it any less right or wrong.”


Right! Why would well informed socialists disagree with this in principle? In capitalist states or in states wherein the government organizes, structures, and dispenses the surplus created -socialists have always argued that these forms of government will always be oppressive. Are you arguing against state-socialism? Lenin referred to his own government as a form of “state capitalism” capable of oppressing labor like any other. Those who owned the means of production were political heads in much the same way we see in capitalism—in fact, almost identically so! However, even he saw this as only “a” road to socialism but not socialism fulfilled because, as you’ve pointed out, the basic social structures were never changed. Changing capitalists’ owners and managers to commissars isn’t an alteration in the social structure-only in name! What you’re arguing against is more directed towards Keynesian theory and statist capitalism (AKA: state socialism)-than socialist theory per se.



Rothbardian wrote,

“The trouble is all a voter has for collateral is his or her vote. People with money can simply buy political prostitutes to much greater effect. The politician/whore will do his/her best to appease both, but that usually means lieing to the voter and pocketing the money. Sorry, I mean 'campaign funds'.”



Few socialists would disagree!


Rothbardian wrote,


“All going completely socialist does is change the oppression from being influenced by money to being influenced by political clout. Instead of having to bribe politicians, you simply have to brown nose them into oppressing your competitors or giving you perks. That or simply rise within the ranks of the mafia itself. By mafia I mean socialist regime, obviously.”


Obviously, this isn’t socialism. The power resides in the workers and their respective communities- not politicians. In such a system what political people and bodies may exist would entirely be beholden to the systemic centralization of power by a plurality of workforces and communities. Your comments, once more, confuse Keynesian economic theory, along with 20th century statist capitalist forms of socialism, with Marxism and what socialists have always traditionally held! Quite naturally, we need not see this as anything more than a strawman argument.

Eric D.

[Eran]

I suspect that there’s more here that we can agree on than might initially appear.

I agree. I am all for cooperation, division of labour and shared communities.

My only requirement is that all such cooperation be done on a voluntary basis.

In order to make your case at all, you’d have to assume a certain sort of social order already: likely some sort of anarcho-capitalism? Yet, even this sort of approach assumes that those in it are willing to take on the sorts of values and ideas of anarcho-capitalism. As of yet, we have no good reason for thinking this.

The ideal I am advocating is a society in which all interactions are voluntary, and (which is equivalent) force may never be legitimately initiated against another person or their peaceful projects.

How people choose to interact within this peaceful framework is, to me, of secondary importance.

Maybe they are able and maybe they’re not.
...
Nor, even under an anarcho-capitalist social order would this follow.

Nor, even under social democracy or socialism.

In general, any solution requires three ingredients:
1. Knowledge (of the problem and effective ways of solving it)
2. Will (desire to work towards a solution)
3. Means (effective resources required to affect a solution)

Governments offer no advantage over peaceful cooperation on any of those three:
1. Knowledge of the problem is typically better available to local, small-scale operators; government decision-makers sitting in a remote capital lack specific knowledge required to design an effective, tailored and appropriate solution
2. Democratic governments reflect, at best, the will of the people. If a democratic government wishes to solve a problem, that is a reflection that a majority of people want it solved. However, just because a democratic government doesn't desire to solve a particular problem doesn't mean that there aren't enough people (albeit a minority) who wish it solved.
3. Government doesn't produce resources. At best, it efficiently moves them from one set of hands to another. In practice, much waste is involved in the process. If a society has the means to solve a problem through government mediation, it obviously has the means to do so without government interference.

So what? Both on the Left and Right agree that political parties pander to their respective groups while deceiving the general public as to their genuine interests. How some political group or party makes use of a term is irrelevant as to the reality status of what the term represents.

I am in neither the left nor the right. I am not calling for a right government. I am calling for no government.

It may be—or it may not be!

It must be. The majority (for instance) doesn't define anything. The majority doesn't act. Only individuals act. There may well be a "good" over which a majority of people agree. But that doesn't make it a "public good". Merely a "popular good".

By the way, whether such things require ‘independence’ of thought and decision making is irrelevant to whether or not groups of people can collectively value the same sorts of things.

Again, groups of people don't value things. Only individuals value things. There may well be a group of people who, each individually, value the same thing. But that doesn't make it a group valuation.

To be clear, I fully recognise that people's valuations are very much dependent on their social context, including interactions with others. But ultimately, the valuation is always individual.

On the more broad ontological argument, you haven’t yet established why the”individual” isn’t an equally confusing conventional reality. To make your case work in the end, it would seem reasonable to first show what is meant by such a thing and how it, then, ought to be equally fundamental to political theory.

I am not sure I understand your point here. In reality, individuals act, make decisions, value things (as demonstrated through their actions), etc.

Groups do none of those things, accept through a verbal slight of hand whereby a decision supported by a majority becomes a group decision.

The “wage,” for example, is not a cooperative element in the wealth-producing order not just because it denies choices to the laborer, but because it is a necessary element for a socially created system to continue to benefit others who do not create the market worth of that labor.

This seems like an important point. A wage doesn't deny workers choices - it adds one more choice (namely to accept the terms of an offer of employment) to whatever set of choices they already had.

In the context of a voluntaryist society (i.e. one based exclusively on voluntary interactions), wage relations signify a choice for distributing the value created by a joint enterprise whereby one or more of the parties ("workers") receive a constant amount, regardless (and temporally ahead of) actual revenues, while other parties (business owners which may, but need not, also own the capital) receive the residual value (which may be a profit or a loss, i.e. a negative amount).

It is obvious that business owners do participate in creating the market worth of the labour. If they didn't, the labourers would have no reason to agree to the agreement - they would simply create the value of their own, and keep it in its entirety.

Business owners typically contribute in a number of critical ways:
1. Advancing wages to workers who are unwilling or unable to wait until the product is actually produced and sold
2. Insulating workers from short-term uncertainty and fluctuation in the value produced by the enterprise
3. Possessing the entrepreneurial alertness required to identify useful, profitable, valuable modes of production
4. Using their savings to acquire the capital equipment required for an efficient production
5. Providing managerial services for the running of the business
6. Providing professional expertise, guiding and directing less-experienced workers
7. Using their reputation to assure customers of the quality of their products

Again, absent artificial barriers created by government regulations, any worker or group of workers who believe that the owners of the business are keeping for themselves an unfair share of the value produced by the business are always at liberty to leave their employer and create their own business, while, as necessary, hiring those ingredients provided by the owner.

For example, workers can, in lieu of using capital equipment purchased and provided by the employer, opt to take a bank loan with which to fund the initial purchase of capital equipment. This isn't a theoretical proposition - it is a daily occurrence.

The issue is that the capitalist argues that he has right to the market value of your labor.

Not at all. At most, the capitalist argues that he has the right to whatever you and he agreed for in advance. Thus if I agreed to work for X hours in exchange for $Y and nothing more, my capitalist employer has the right to retain whatever excess value remains after my wages (and other expenses) have been paid (if any value remains).

The capitalist doesn't argue for any right not explicitly, knowingly and voluntarily agreed-to by the worker!

There’s nothing that capitalists DO to earn that right!

I listed at least seven different things capitalists typically do to "earn that right".

The bottom line is simple. If the capitalists do not contribute anything of value, why do workers agree to work for them, rather than for themselves?

Here is another way of looking at it. One of the most valued "things" in the context of the economy is "jobs". What is a "job"? It is precisely what the capitalist (or socialist) employer brings to the table. A "job" involves all those ingredients (listed above) that are required before the mere labour of a worker has any value within society.

The value of everything capitalists bring to the table is reflected in the huge value members of society (from common workers to heads of state) place on "jobs".

For socialism, the economic order and the governmental order are owned by the people-NOT THE PUBLIC OR THE MARKET!

The "market" is nothing other than the collection of choices made by people. The "public" is another word for the people.

The market, in fact, is the only true expression of the will of the people. True, because it doesn't go through the distorting lens of politicians and other government decision-makers.

But there’s not only NO guarantee of this under Libertarianism-but the opposite is far likelier, just as history has shown.

What historic episode do you have in mind that showed the opposite?

So, while I’m free to pursue the means necessary to fulfil my needs and desires, I MUST do so within the narrow limits of what other people own and what they may rightly deny me.

Indeed. But I must stress (something I rarely do often enough) that the only property worthy of protection is justly-acquired property, rather than arbitrary titles awarded by government.

For a resource to become a person's justly-acquired property, that acquisition has to proceed without the initiation of force. Essentially, there are only two ways that can happen:
1. A previously-unused resource is incorporated into a person's projects in such a ways as to reasonably require the exclusion of others. Note that by acquiring the resource, no other person is harmed, as the resource, by definition, wasn't used. If a resource was used, but not owned, any property rights acquired are limited by the need to respect the pre-existing use pattern.
2. A resource already owned by another person is transferred voluntarily. This could be as a gift (e.g. parent to child, or charitable assistance), as an exchange (e.g. barter, monetary sale) or conditional upon performance of a task (e.g. wage labour, payment for services rendered)

With that in mind, any attempt by you to violate my property rights is equivalent to your initiation of force against me or my peaceful projects. Under normal conditions (i.e. excluding life-threatening emergencies, or "life boat" situations of severely-scarce essential resources), such initiation of force would be (by the moral code I am advancing) illegitimate.

My means are equal to what I have, including my abilities.

Plus whatever other people willingly give you.

Those with no property and little ability will have no liberty or even potential to gain it.

Everybody owns, at the very least, their own body. Those with no external property nor the ability to provide others with useful services would, indeed, have to rely on the contribution of others.

This tends to be the case under all social systems. The only difference is whether your system sanctions the initiation of force against peaceful people to force them to help third parties, or whether help may only be asked for, rather than demanded at the point of a gun.

Btw, certain terms (including "liberty", "freedom", "exploitation", "coercion", "violence", "fairness") are, in the context of discussions such as the one we are conducting, so broad as to be virtually useless.

Eventually, those who can and have a mind and interest in gobbling up as much of the economic resources as possible, along with the available labor resources at some specific economic time, over the many who have utterly NO interest in market matters whatsoever- would own the bulk of the “social” order (since, quite logically, the social order is structured in just the economic way you support).

You are making the implicit (and wrong) assumption that the relevant quantity of "economic resources" is limited. In fact, people acquire property by increasing the amount (measured by value) of economic resources available to society.

When an unused is brought into use (homesteading), its value is added to the value of economic resources available in society.
When an exchange takes place (whether of one good for another, one good for money, a good for service or money for service), both sides to the exchange engage in it only following their subjective assessment of that which they receive as having greater value (to them) than that which they give up. In other words, economic value is created in each voluntary exchange.

Thus the image of "gobbling up economic resources" is misleading. In fact, people create value through their productive efforts. They normally retain a fraction of the value they create, while passing much of that value to other members in society.

Consider, for example, a profitable company. Some people focus on the profit "extracted" by its owners. But much more important than that profit is the value added to every single party with which the company interacts - suppliers, workers and customers. Each of them is enriched by that interaction (for otherwise, they wouldn't choose to engage in it). In aggregate, the value to society far exceeds any profit retained by corporate owners.

With that in mind, it is clear that in a voluntarist society there are no "winners" and "losers". Rather, everybody wins from a large number of positive-sum exchanges and productive activities. Sure - some people may become very wealthy. But invariably, they become wealthy by making many others better off.

When the social-natural order is divvied up by capitalist-market forces, some will have more-others simply will have none.

In fact, under capitalist market forces, the lowest members of society benefit the most. To wit, members of the upper class have lived comfortable lives in every age. But while pre-capitalist working class people existed on the verge of starvation, rarely being able to afford even the most modest luxuries, capitalist working class people routinely enjoy the kinds of luxuries that nobody could even dream of a few decades ago. Most so-called "poor" families in America, for example, own cars, live in spacious and air-conditioned homes, own multiple colour TVs, refrigerators, microwaves, washer/driers, gaming systems, cellular phones, and on and on. They have access to a wider range of food products than did the kings of the middle ages. Not to mention their ability to travel, communicate and acquire knowledge.

If, for example, I’m extremely successful over my market-geographical domain, I’ll likely not take kindly to some innovative capitalist who would appear to start eating away at my market. If I could form some legal-solution or council or whatever non-market means to stop him, it would be in my interest to do so. Moreover, I would have even greater reason to do so if I had, for whatever reason, the support of the people.

This is why social/political norms are so crucially important. In today's US, for example, no person, no matter how wealthy, popular or politically powerful, can, with impunity, disobey a decision of the US Supreme Court. If a popular President tried to do that, he wouldn't remain either popular or president for long.

I am calling for a society in which respect for other people's property rights occupies the same role in people's scale of norms as respect for the Constitution does in today's America.

Within such a society, an extremely successful capitalist would no more be able to use legal solutions to stop an innovative competitors than the President of the US can avoid handing over power after an electoral defeat. The public won't stand for it. Period.

After all, if the only rule is respect of others property, and I find that my place of work is moving abroad, I might be encouraged to find work elsewhere-or I might simply see it within my immediate interests to organize politically and FORCE the plant or whatever-to stay.

Again, no more so than workers can (with impunity) steal their employer's property. Note that such an effort by workers is futile. The workers can physically take over the production plant, but not, typically, pay suppliers (or themselves). Nor, if the plant is losing money, expect to retain their jobs for long.

You’ve nowhere explained what private property is and how something is “justly acquired,” let alone why we ought to have these things.

I have now done so above. Fundamentally, private property is the formalisation of the Non Aggression Principle, formulated as
"It is wrong to initiate force against another person or their peaceful ongoing projects". It is, in other words, nothing more or less than the intuitive moral calling that using force against peaceful others is wrong.

The point is that both the politician and the capitalist have shared reasons for mixing their respective domains: the interests of both, in a capitalist system, are often one and the same-often by one and the same group.

Indeed. Just as the politician and the religious leader had shared reasons for mixing their respective domains. But that shared interest isn't enough to overcome deeply-rooted and broadly-held societal norms, such as the one which, in contemporary western culture, abhor involvement of government in matters of faith.

Similarly, once the NAP (perhaps in a slightly weaker form that still allows a minimalist "law-and-order" government, as some of my non-anarchist libertarians friends prefer) is similarly well-established, the shared interests of the politician and the capitalist will be insufficient to affect government intervention in economic matters.

Religion and religious ideas MAY involve power systems, or they may not. Political systems cannot do without economic systems

I honestly don't see why. In fact, from the vantage point of the 16th century, for example, the mutual involvement of religious ideas and power systems would seem much more inevitable than that of political systems and economics.

Also, it was the LAW, see our Constitution, that made religion a personal matter,i.e., FORCED religion to a secondary optional -personal issue.

The American system happens to be based on a written Constitution. But norms against government imposition of religious values are equally strong in Britain, where they aren't enshrined in any law or written document. In principle, Parliament could pass a law that prohibits non-Christian faiths from practising. In practice, such move is unthinkable in today's Britain (though it was obviously commonplace in the 16th century).

As for the Constitution, it is, again, social norms rather than written words that dictate the effective limitations it places on government. While social norms in America are fairly strict regarding the separation of Church and State, prohibition against freedom of speech, for example, is much weaker, allowing gaping exceptions to the simple rule "Congress shall make no law...".

The enumerated powers doctrine is even more obviously abused.

So you see, it isn't a written law, but only "law" in its most general sense of "widely accepted and legitimately enforceable norms" that effectively limits government's scope of legitimate action.

As a side note, if I were you I would become much more familiar with how religion and its ideas have and are currently influencing U.S. policy both Federally and at the state-level. Just this past week N.C. was trying to pass a law establishing a state religion. The debate on this issue is far from settled. The law and the courts are still attempting to clarify this very amendment.

There is backwards-and-forwards around the edges of the envelope of legitimate government actions. But there is no doubt that those edges are very far from where they have been in, say, 16th century England.

I can see a libertarian (obviously non-anarchist) government in which, for example, the use of taxation to fund overseas pre-emptive military strikes is an issue at the edge of what would be considered legitimate government action, but in which protective tariffs, eminent domain confiscation, drug laws, labour regulations, tax-funded social welfare programs and the thousands of other things governments do today would be considered illegitimate by virtually all members of society.

When owners decide to move, include some new labor-saving technology, or simply merge with another making competition more difficult, this directly impacts us objectively and in ways that don’t necessarily add diversity to the market.

Our normal, everyday moral intuition requires much more than "object impact" before the use of force is considered legitimate. When a girl I fancy prefers another man, I am "objectively" impacted in ways that, for me, may be very important. Yet nobody believes that such an impact legitimises my assaulting that man.

Rather than the vague term of "objectively impact", we use a much more specific term to identify what interests I may legitimately (myself or through delegation to others) protect using force. We call it "property".

So, you do support coercion to protect a person and his property?

I do support the use of force (I wouldn't call it "coercion", but note that "coercion" is one of those vague terms I dislike using) to protect a person and his (justly-acquired) property.

I support a system whereby institutions do exist to protect people's property rights (including rights in their own body, contractual rights, prohibition of fraud, etc.), but in which those institutions are both (1) voluntarily funded (i.e. not through taxes), and (2) do not enjoy a territorial monopoly (i.e. more than one may operate concurrently).

As already pointed out, I see no reason why worker and capitalist alike would want the Libertarian view at all when there’s far more to be gained by both by NOT having such a so-called anarchic order.

It is in virtually everybody's (rightly-understood, long-term) interests to maintain law and order. It is (less obviously, but still very much so, in my view) in virtually everybody's (rightly-understood, long-term) interests to respect the NAP (and, by consequence, other people's property).

Once that is understood by most members in society, the rest follows. In precisely the same way that virtually everybody today understands that judicial decisions ought to be respected.

Once norms associated with law and order, security and long-term growth are well-established, members of society reject opportunistic (and criminal) attempts to violate those norms. Human nature is such that it rebels against such attempts even if those attempts do not immediately endanger our selfish interests.

Whatever the amount or the identity of the objects involved in the means of production and owners of production may be at any given time- there are, nonetheless, distinct relationships between these market players.

My point isn't that the nature of the means of production changes over time. We both agree on that. My point, rather, is that at any given time in history, the pool of available means of production isn't fixed. Rather, means of production are routinely and regularly created (and destroyed). Thus, they aren't subject to monopolization. This is an important point. Because means of production are readily created, workers who choose to engage in a mutually-beneficial arrangement with owners of such means of production do so because they assess that it is better for them to give up some of the surplus value created by their labour in exchange for the convenience of using the means of production provided by others.

In effect, the participants in the productive enterprise each bring something to the table, and each take something away. There is a (multi-party) exchange going on. The terms of the exchange are mutually agreed by all.

Workers "give up" some of the surplus value in exchange for using means of production (in a very broad sense, often dominated by non-material assets such as reputation, innovation, etc.). Business owners "give up" some of the surplus value in exchange for the labour of the workers. More and more often, the lines are blurred through stock options, production-related bonuses, part-ownership, etc.

What arguments do you have to show that labor had or made some sort of choice to work for capitalists?

Very simply, nobody held a gun to their head. They chose (often eagerly) to work for the capitalists. In fact, the vast majority of today's capitalists (by which I take it you really mean some combination of business owners and senior managers) haven't been born capitalist. They started their career as workers, and, through ability, hard work, entrepreneurship, prudence and talent, made their way to their current position.

The exact same road is open to all workers.

In a society which doesn't accept parasitism as a way of life, every able person has to produce in order to acquire the necessities of life. Capitalists offer workers a much better opportunity to produce than would otherwise be available to them (see my point above about "jobs" and their real and perceived value).

Does capitalism justify itself by voluntary agreement or by just acquisition? If just acquisition is, or can be, the same as ‘nothing but voluntary economic-social arrangements,’ then you cannot mean that capitalism is about one keeping or earning what one produces!

Capitalism is, first and foremost, about voluntary relations. In practice, however, voluntary relations tend to lead to each person retaining the value they produce. This is an "asymptotic" relation. In other words, the operations of the market tend to push wages and prices in that direction. However, at any given moment, the relation need not hold exactly.

I can unfold for you the rather long story of how capitalists have spent a whole history in order to set labor policy, tell tales of literal bloodshed that labor had to fight in order to get basic rights to negotiate, and of many-many stories of union busting and threats made against labor for even daring to collectively discuss possibilities of bringing in democratic principles to the workplace.

None of which would be relevant to the question I asked. If the workers rejected the capitalist offer of employment and just started their own company, the issue of labour union would be moot.

Why didn't they?

Socialists have little problem explaining why many laborers in an economic tradition that has dominated and structured their culture for more than three-hundred years would “choose” a capitalist arrangement over some alternative. Our law, social organizations, many of our churches, key teachers, a major political party and its many advocates all support and speak out for it. To pretend that such labor decisions are made in some sort of voluntaristic vacuum is just that: pretending!

In both Britain and the US (and, as far as I know, many other places), norms valuing entrepreneurship, becoming "self-made man", as well as mutual aid and collaboration amongst workers are equally present.

In today's age of start-ups and IPOs you have to be a hermit not to realise that starting your own business (alone or with a group of others) is not just socially acceptable, it is highly valued and rewarded.

Yet most workers (and I personally amongst them) prefer (for understandable prudential reasons) the convenience and security of wage employment over the hard work and risks associated with self-production.

Or, rather the range of value that a society of consumers, educated labor, and capital investment freely provided to the employer.

But since employers (with the exception of crony capitalists which, as you know, I completely reject) don't belong to a legally-privileged class, whatever value a society of consumers, educated labour and capital investments are freely provided to the employer, they would be equally provided to any of his workers. Such background conditions for success still do not explain why it is that most people prefer wage employment over self-start.

Since the largest and most successful businesses rely heavily on government subsidies and bailouts due to bad-short-sighted economic interests, I fail to see “market know how” here.

I agree. Government subsidies and bailouts (as well as less obvious assistance through regulation and tariffs) do tend to bias the playing field against workers. You and I can join in calling for their abolition.

I never claimed that workers get a fair deal in today's world. Rather, I claim that they would get a fair deal in a world in which government doesn't get involved in the economy, and, therefore, government subsidies and bailouts wouldn't exist.




I'll stop here for lack of time. There is plenty more to discuss!

[edelker]

Hello all,


Eran wrote,

“My only requirement is that all such cooperation be done on a voluntary basis.”


Save under capitalism there’s no such bird-ultimately.


Eran wrote,

“The ideal I am advocating is a society in which all interactions are voluntary, and (which is equivalent) force may never be legitimately initiated against another person or their peaceful projects.”


Nothing voluntary about labor having no rights over its own production, distribution of the goods it produces or having no say over the existence of its own employment. Unless you want to say it is fine as long as it’s all voluntary. But if you opt for this, then so much for capitalism being a system wherein all keep what they earn!


Eran wrote,

“How people choose to interact within this peaceful framework is, to me, of secondary importance.”


Shouldn’t be when you factor in the certain defenses made by capitalists FOR capitalism—such as “just acquisition” doctrine.


Eran wrote,

“Nor, even under social democracy or socialism.

In general, any solution requires three ingredients:
1. Knowledge (of the problem and effective ways of solving it)”

Labor is tasked with this in capitalism but receives only a market fraction of the benefits that knowledge brings.

Eran:

"2. Will (desire to work towards a solution):”

Not all want or desire to work for capital (money)!

Eran:

"3. Means (effective resources required to affect a solution)”

In capitalism not all have the same means!

Besides, none of this was the point being made! It might do you well to stay within the context of the comments of mine you cite!

People interested in fighting poverty or doing some other thing is one thing-having the capacity to do it is another. Under capitalism, many want to be able to meet their needs and desires but cannot because they’re not in the social position of ownership.

Now, this isn’t to say that all would be well under all other systems. The comment of yours in the previous post revealed a fallacy in thought. Please read carefully so I do not have to correct poorly understood points due to lack of reading or what have you.


Eran wrote,

“Governments offer no advantage over peaceful cooperation on any of those three:”


Why, for god-sake, do you think, for the umpteenth time, that I’m defending “big” Keynesian economics? Socialism need not require this view!


Eran wrote,

“1. Knowledge of the problem is typically better available to local, small-scale operators; government decision-makers sitting in a remote capital lack specific knowledge required to design an effective, tailored and appropriate solution”

Agreed! Socialism is for labor and local communities governing themselves principally! You’re assuming state-capitalism—most forms of 20th century communism.

You should also note, however, this applies equally to big business as well. In fact, if business is large enough, local problems, challenges etc. becomes equally irrelevant to those in control of capital.


Eran wrote,

“2. Democratic governments reflect, at best, the will of the people. If a democratic government wishes to solve a problem, that is a reflection that a majority of people want it solved. However, just because a democratic government doesn't desire to solve a particular problem doesn't mean that there aren't enough people (albeit a minority) who wish it solved.”


O.K. I presume this is supposed to address my position? For socialism, democracy is more than what occurs in some government body somewhere! Principally, the interest for socialists isn’t to give authority over to either capitalists or “big” government bodies! Both exploit the people’s labor and lives. You should become more familiar with the position you’re supposed to be criticizing.


Eran wrote,

“3. Government doesn't produce resources. At best, it efficiently moves them from one set of hands to another. In practice, much waste is involved in the process. If a society has the means to solve a problem through government mediation, it obviously has the means to do so without government interference.”


Well, we will have some significant grounds for agreement here. However, the fact is that everything you stated here is equally true of business:
Businesses do not produce resources, people’s labor does!


There is no such thing as “efficiency.” This is a term as magical to contemporary economics as “vitalism” was to 18 and 19thth century naturalism.


Waists? I can personally provide you shockingly high figures for how much companies, companies I’ve even worked for, waists in products that would be useful and desirable to/for others. The very fact that we have millions of people out of work and with no permanent living quarters while tens of millions of homes lie wide open and in ruin is a testament to how capitalism fails-not to its efficiency! Because somebody cannot make money off of these people’s living arrangements, due to their lack of ability to pay up immediately, millions go without a home and work. Not a very “efficient” way to use human and natural resources.


Also, business may provide for “some” of our needs-but it more often will provide us with what we don’t need, isn't healthy for us, nor does it provide for what we even necessarily want; the market forces us to have new technologies that are mere creations for sale only, for instance: the cell phone is one such example (not that these are either more cost effective for the consumer or something consumers ever demanded from the market en force). I fail to see how fatty foods, oceans of alcohol, poisonous inhalants (like cigarettes), and senseless entertainment are a benefit to anyone or have anything to do with being an “efficient” system!


Socialists see no advantage in either big government or big business. Again!!


Eran wrote,

“I am in neither the left nor the right. I am not calling for a right government. I am calling for no government.”


How in the world are you missing my points so badly? I didn’t write that you were on the Left or the Right! Your point was simply irrelevant and that’s what I was addressing by way of stating the obvious! How did you miss that?

You’re quite apparently NOT reading the posts!


Eran wrote,

“It must be. The majority (for instance) doesn't define anything. The majority doesn't act. Only individuals act. There may well be a "good" over which a majority of people agree. But that doesn't make it a "public good". Merely a "popular good".”


K… now do you wish to make an argument here or only report what you think?


If an army goes to war or a group of “individuals” decide on a law there’s no conceptual conflict or special logical problem that exists between what “individuals” do as a group and what a “group” does. Saying that the group isn’t real doesn’t magically make it so. You have to make an argument-and you still haven’t.


I would argue that “groups” as well as the individual is as conventional a concept as anything else we use. Simple: I can reduce a person much like I can a group: I can define such things in relation to other dependent properties. However, such reductionism leads me to the position that no thing exists independently of another! If, for example, I consider a tree, I have several choices on how to define it. But if I wanted to know what ‘it’ is metaphysically, then I would want to know what it is separate from all else—those qualities that give it its esse or identity. However, each of its properties is dependent on still some other set of properties and so on. There’s no fixed reason for me to ‘stop’ at some set of properties over and against another set outside of the choices, influence, and whatnot that I have on me when going about the definitional process. The tree merges with other objects (sunlight; soil; the atmosphere, into particle physics, and so forth) on which it depends.


I can define the individual conventionally if I’d like-but there’s no more sense in talking about “individuals” than there is “groups" “ultimately.” But if we adopt a certain set of semantics and logical structure in order to understand and manage the world as it appears “for us,” then, given this insight and our general psychology, there’s little difficulty in seeing how the two concepts may well work.


Now, this rather abstract analysis does inform my practical political and ethical stances: if I cannot find some ultimate way to define me as an ultimate separate being, then my interests and goals are not fundamentally different from yours or the health of the ecology or the stability of the economy or anything else. This doesn’t mean I forgo my interests and desires, however. Quite the opposite! When I pursue them, I realize that I need others and certain dependent environments to make anything happen. My life (however I may wish to define it) depends on other people, places and things. This realization is a fact about existence that many capitalist apologists only obscure in their varied attempts to justify the autocratic rule of some over the many.


Eran wrote,


“To be clear, I fully recognise that people's valuations are very much dependent on their social context, including interactions with others. But ultimately, the valuation is always individual.”


‘Valuation is dependent on social context-but it’s still individual’ assumes that the “choice” of a person is always like that of one “choosing” ice-cream out of nowhere (the "prime mover" concept made applicable to "individual" persons), that is, at some cognitive point or other, accepting or rejecting a value (or, really, anything) is clear and accepted by an individual without contextual restraints. So, odldly enough, context may "influnce" choice, but doesn't determine it. However, we have no reason for thinking this is how human choice works. In fact, we have good reason to reject this notion of volition. One, choices can be made in numerous cognitive ways that often rarely involve direct conscious assent. At an early age I accepted the religion of my parents as a matter of course. I don’t recall it ever being an issue of choice anything like the choice I eventually made, by very different cognitive means, when I rejected that faith!


Two, the notion of "choice," for me, has no more intrinsic nature than objects do! My choices are BOTH cause and effect of countless influences, many times arguably simultaneously so. There's simply no way to show, convincingly, I think, that choice is fundamental or logically or existentially prior. Choices are part of our cognition and face the same "overdetermination" and "interdependency" that any conceptual or concrete object does.

Given this view, then, choice is never reducible to what individuals do alone. My choice to go to college is determined by conditions that I neither created nor control. I will cognitively decide and physically act on some course of action, indeed. However, the total ingredients that compose these phenomena are multiple and interdependent. I cannot chase down the causal sequence to some set of properties of cognition that we could call "free" choice. I cause as I'm also being caused to think and act. There's simply no way to show that "my" decisions are free and individual than there is to show that “material” rocks depend on supernatural properties of "rockness" independent of geology and all else.

Part of this view is motivated by mereological reductionism. A view that, in the end, rejects the existence of all essences and forms. Choice is real but not independent! If not, once more, show this analysis to be wrong and the world to be otherwise-or move on.

Also, I'm not arguing that we have no influence. On the contrary: we do. However, trying to say that this object, act, or thought is wholly "mine" separate from all else-caused by nothing or emerging from my own mind alone would be, on this view, fiction. Theism magically made to be human will.


Eran wrote,


“I am not sure I understand your point here. In reality, individuals act, make decisions, value things (as demonstrated through their actions), etc. Groups do none of those things, accept through a verbal slight of hand whereby a decision supported by a majority becomes a group decision.”


No verbal slight of hand any more than what our conventions allow: groups of people act collectively on all sorts of things. Merely telling us that they’re but bundles of individuals is hardly problematic for my view. By inferring that groups in no way exist because they are defined-or in some ideological context-only in terms of individualism is not a warranted conclusion from the premise ‘that groups are bundles of individual people.’ Conceptually speaking, groups can do things individuals cannot! Groups can make decisions that individuals cannot. Groups can be semantically addressed in ways that individuals cannot. Groups can receive things that individuals cannot. There’s nothing neither unintelligent nor logically problematic about these things: this way of talking is perfectly reasonable and understandable. To say that groups don’t in any way exist because we can “choose” to define them in terms of individuals doesn’t follow. Boats are nothing but the planks that make them up! Buildings are nothing but the brick, wood, and mortar of something we only casually refer to as “building.” No ant colonies exist because all there is are individual ants, and so on. Or, the “individual” is nothing but biological electro-chemicals.


While these things are so at the ultimate level of ontological analysis, as I’ve already discussed above, to say that there’s no intelligent way or significant human experience explained around these conventional conceptions, thus being real to and for us, clearly doesn’t follow. For us semantically, culturally, psychologically, experientially, rationally, and so on these terms have meaning. Such reductionism matters in how we approach our world-but these terms still have meaning FOR US. Moreover, if we follow this reductionism to its rational conclusions, it leads away from some monadic universe of separated individuals to quite an opposite conclusion. One I don’t think you’d prefer in any way. Again, I’ve covered this above.


Eran wrote,


“This seems like an important point. A wage doesn't deny workers choices - it adds one more choice (namely to accept the terms of an offer of employment) to whatever set of choices they already had.”


Irrelevant, once more. Eran, I’m going to address just a few more points and then move on with my evening. I’m doing this because you’re quite clearly not reading my posts. Some points you hit on and most others you’re just sort of glossing over and either NOT getting the point made or you’re flat taking my comments out of context in order to make some point you simply want to make regardless of what I’ve spent time actually writing. I simply can’t spend ridiculous amounts of time having to clarify points that simple attention to detail and responsible handling of contexts would cure. So, unless you can refocus on my points and actually address them, as well as address my position, I see no reason for further discussion.


But on this point, here we go: I didn’t argue that “wages” ONLY deny choices. I was trying, apparently in vain, to get you to focus on what’s actually relevant to socialism! What I wrote was,

“The “wage,” for example, is not a COOPERATIVE element in the wealth-producing order NOT just because it denies CHOICES to the laborer, but BECAUSE it is a necessary element for a socially created system to continue to benefit others who do not create the market worth of that labor” (emphasis mine).


My interest here wasn’t why there are certain kinds of choice restrictions in capitalism. If you read my comments elsewhere, I’ve already admitted that capitalist arrangements differ in what they offer labor-and that labor isn’t tied to a single employer. It makes no difference to our position that capitalism offers some set of choices over and against other systems. We already know this. Our interests is in how wages, for example, are used by owners of production to ‘take’ away the market value (surplus) from labor and distribute that surplus in ways that labor doesn’t control. Hence, it is not only possible in capitalism, but actual, that wages are not tied to profit. They may be-but the employer decides: the owner of the productive property-not you! Oftentimes, capitalists conflate wage and profit as being part of one singular relationship. From our point of view, they are not.


So, we have, for example, a Burger King worker that makes 7.25 an hour. He can make 100 burgers or just 10-his wage will remain the same. However, the surplus he creates through his labor is worth far more than what his wage reflects. It may be the case, again, that some capitalists choose to tie wages to profits. But this need not be a necessary property of capitalist market production. Labor has no say. This isn’t about choices ONLY. This is about a system wherein one group produces what another group gets to keep, manage, and distribute at will.


Eran wrote,

“In the context of a voluntaryist society (i.e. one based exclusively on voluntary interactions), wage relations signify a choice for distributing the value created by a joint enterprise whereby one or more of the parties ("workers") receive a constant amount, regardless (and temporally ahead of) actual revenues, while other parties (business owners which may, but need not, also own the capital) receive the residual value (which may be a profit or a loss, i.e. a negative amount).”


Or, we could just have a society wherein the laborers involved, including those with capital, all decide “freely” how to manage, organize, and distribute the profit. There would be utterly NO reason for your latter party: the one who may or may not put up the money for workers and who would receive, rather arbitrarily, the market value of other people’s labor. Why not just have a social order wherein one cannot own, manage, or distribute the work and surplus of another. This WOULD BE REAL freedom.


If workers wanted to have one person get all the value, so be it. However, they could also choose to take it back, under whatever agreements all have involved. Seemingly under your system of so-called liberty of choice-or under the one we now have, labor doesn’t have the freedom of such choice. Seems that we socialists are offering up a genuine and better libertarian view than the Libertarians after all.



Eran wrote,


“It is obvious that business owners do participate in creating the market worth of the labour. If they didn't, the labourers would have no reason to agree to the agreement - they would simply create the value of their own, and keep it in its entirety.”


LOL! Nice use of the historical fallacy: Since it is this way, it must be the best or correct way we seemingly prefer. After all, I could argue the same for government! If the people wanted to be free of government, why would they have chosen this as a means to best meet their needs! Hence, government is good! Right?

Again, I'm making a point. Please don't think I'm supporting "big" government. Read carefully! Please!


Labor would, except most of us live in the real world wherein the economic and social order is organized and managed by capitalists. This has been the case in Western Civ. for more than two hundred years. It is far more practical for a middle-class or poor laborer to work for an established social order than change it oneself. The means just aren’t there for most!

Although, there are plenty of cooperatives and emerging cooperatives. They bring in some 2-billion a year in profit in the U.S. economy alone. So, who knows!


Also, NO: labor has, and always has had, value. Capitalists are what’s new to the historical scene-not labor.


Eran wrote,


“Business owners typically contribute in a number of critical ways:

1. Advancing wages to workers who are unwilling or unable to wait until the product is actually produced and sold”


Perhaps! Some do and some don’t! Actually, most do not! Not sure how this shows capitalism to be superior to socialism.


Eran wrote,


“2. Insulating workers from short-term uncertainty and fluctuation in the value produced by the enterprise”


You mean uncertainty and fluctuations caused by capitalist markets themselves. K??


Eran wrote,

“3. Possessing the entrepreneurial alertness required to identify useful, profitable, valuable modes of production”


Since between 95% and 98% of entrepreneurs fail, and who cause their employees to lose their jobs, you must mean the successful fraction of entrepreneurial alertness which is less than 5% of the total number of entrepreneurs at any given time. If my car failed this much, I’d junk it!


Eran wrote,


“4. Using their savings to acquire the capital equipment required for an efficient production”


Or, like most businesses (small and large) they simply get that capital equipment from our collective earnings and savings (their called banks—via business loans) or investors who actually use other people’s money to invest. Or, maybe they get it from the government, an uncle or whatever.


Labor governing its own production could do the same and KEEP the profits ever how they decide!


Eran wrote,


“5. Providing managerial services for the running of the business”


No, you mean spending unnecessarily large amounts of the surplus (manager’s pay-benefits etc.) on an employee to discipline the other employees and do work owners are too lazy to do for themselves (like payroll)! Again, labor doesn’t require this either! They can decide for themselves how to manage within the domain of democratically agreed upon arrangements! They don’t need the often useless, and possibly poor, decision makers of a select few who are often chosen for personal reasons by the owners or other managers rather than for professional reasons!


Eran wrote,


“6. Providing professional expertise, guiding and directing less-experienced workers”


Nonsense! You’ve always had this—far prior to capitalists. This is no more a reason for capitalism than it would be for state socialist arguing for the need of managerial commissars.


Besides, its ususally labor that does the educating here-not business owners.


Eran wrote,


“7. Using their reputation to assure customers of the quality of their products”


Like AIG and Goldman S. did by assuring their customers’ investments were AAA rated when they were nowhere near that grade-quality? This works sometimes, and, at others, the opposite occurs. Again, workers could provide this as well! Capitalists taking our labor value is simply unnecessary for any of these supposed values to exist!


Again, Eran, you’re not dealing with my arguments-only perception of what you think socialism is.


Eran wrote,

“Again, absent artificial barriers created by government regulations, any worker or group of workers who believe that the owners of the business are keeping for themselves an unfair share of the value produced by the business are always at liberty to leave their employer and create their own business, while, as necessary, hiring those ingredients provided by the owner. For example, workers can, in lieu of using capital equipment purchased and provided by the employer, opt to take a bank loan with which to fund the initial purchase of capital equipment. This isn't a theoretical proposition - it is a daily occurrence.”


It’s not just that the owners are keeping an unfair share! They’re keeping the value of something that they didn’t produce! Yet, they get to keep the market value, manage it, and dispense it however they choose without the choices of those who produced it being anywhere involved.
Workers can do this and where we can we should. However, this is getting away from the point: Capitalists lay claim to something they don’t produce. Period! They structure employment arrangements against labor choice while doing, in most cases, none of the labor. Most don’t even do the work of advertising and marketing their own products. No group has the right to any such arrangement.


Yes, you and I can agree that if we lived in a world wherein all was equal, and horses could fly and candy grew on trees, and everyone could choose how they wish to produce the goods and services for themselves, and many a-labor “chose” to arrange their production in ways identical to, say, Burger King, so be it! But NO (again, I want you to see the word: NO) such choice exist in a capitalist order. If workers choose this order, they are free to take it. Most of labor today does not have that choice! Capitalism is about having set economic arrangements that benefit certain groups- arbitrarily-over others. Capitalist industries offer no such choices and all who’s ever worked in one (which is most) are made keenly aware of this when they start their first job!


If you want a social order about liberty, then government isn’t where you start the critical analysis. Like ALL anarchist of old, you begin with how “work” is done. Why? Because how a society organizes its work will be how it organizes its POWER! If a society states that no one can OWN another’s body, mind or labor-or the results of that person’s labor, then the issue about coercion is over and centralizing power is impossible! If no one can pull economic power from the masses and keep it for herself, then there’s no centralization of material resources and no centralization or potential centralization FOR power.


Rights to use land and material and to freely negotiate as part and parcel of being part of a community will do just as effectively. We no more need property “rights” for this or capitalist ownership than we need rulers telling us when we will go to war and with whom and over what economic interests some group of capitalists has in some region of the world.


Libertarianism upholds the central idea relevant to all power: Property! Choices are only relevant as they pertain to the production and management of this mysterious thing. But wherever there's "something" to be had that is vital to social organization and resources, POWER will evolve and develop for the purpose of some to control the choices of others. To have a truly free society one must abandon this conception as much as one ought to fight against any autocratic government. Those who "have" will always find ways to get more, in part, to control those who don't! Both government rule and its economic rule depends on this conception to deprive the people of what they need and want. Again, the reason is to control the people. Religion, and other social institutions factor in, in order to convince the masses that they ought to give of themselves (labor) and their "property" to those who should rightly have it!

Naturally, once the people began to shift from Church-State control, those emerging merchants and industrialists gradually replaced the old order of power with their own. Knowing that such power could be lost to the feeble masses, they paid homage to certain, then growing popular, ideas about liberty and equality. But, new forms of Enlightened governments usually restricted the people on the grounds of property rights (rights of the rich to keep what they have "earned"; the right of the state to govern and needing the material--property--resources to do it, and granting "some" citizens participation in governance in as long as they were, wait for it...., property owners). Such a conception had to be invented (see the philosophical drivel of Locke on this point) in order for the New Power to validate itself and keep these new ideas managed within the masses. The Old Power system remained in structure with only labels and justifications having changed.

No such case could ever be made on socialist terms! We all have right to the world because we are all in equal relation to the material world and the needs and desires that compose the human experience are not owned or reduced to some holy-group of betters. No person could ever invent a more autocratic, conceptually vague, and oppressive concept better than property if he tried!

Have to run for now,

Chat soon!

[ralfy]

Easy. Voters oppress other voters by using the government. People who want what their neighbors have, or do not like certain behaviors and want them removed, can vote for using the guns and bombs of the state to threaten the lives of those who disagree with them. Everyone gets to do this. You can call them capitalists and pretend they have hooves and fangs the way you obviously do but that doesn't make it any less right or wrong.

Yeah, voters forced each other to vote for one Reagan clone after another that promised tax cuts and easy credit.

The trouble is all a voter has for collateral is his or her vote. People with money can simply buy political prostitutes to much greater effect. The politician/whore will do his/her best to appease both, but that usually means lieing to the voter and pocketing the money. Sorry, I mean 'campaign funds'.

And don't forget that the same people provided easy credit to the same voters, not to mention to government, which in turn engaged in tax cuts.

All going completely socialist does is change the oppression from being influenced by money to being influenced by political clout. Instead of having to bribe politicians, you simply have to brown nose them into oppressing your competitors or giving you perks. That or simply rise within the ranks of the mafia itself. By mafia I mean socialist regime, obviously.

Socialist? What you have is the complete opposite, i.e., the result of free market capitalism. Put simply, with free market capitalism, some become stronger than others and take over.

[Rothbardian]

Socialist? What you have is the complete opposite, i.e., the result of free market capitalism. Put simply, with free market capitalism, some become stronger than others and take over.

You can argue that free markets lead to some becoming stronger and taking over the rest of society the way that I can argue that geocentrism actually is true. All's fair game here on the interwebs. But as a system, free market systems are the only way to have each individual treated 100% equally by that system.

Socialism, as a system, gives extreme control to an extreme minority, supposedly to act at the behest of a majority opinion. So, in terms of how the system itself is structured, those within the state have the greatest levels of power, those who are part of a majority opinion on any given issue come next, and those who have a minority opinion just get bent over and screwed by everyone else with no recourse except to leave their family, friends, and home.

You can rant about how much you hate people who are successful on their own merit all you like, but as a system, yours is the one that oppresses people by its very nature, not mine.

The only difference between you and I is that I am not willing to put a gun to your head to force you to cooperate with me.

[ralfy]

You can argue that free markets lead to some becoming stronger and taking over the rest of society the way that I can argue that geocentrism actually is true. All's fair game here on the interwebs. But as a system, free market systems are the only way to have each individual treated 100% equally by that system.

You are mistaken. Free market capitalism only gives you the opportunity to profit, but it doesn't give you the same opportunity as others, or the guarantee that everyone will be treated equally.

Socialism, as a system, gives extreme control to an extreme minority, supposedly to act at the behest of a majority opinion. So, in terms of how the system itself is structured, those within the state have the greatest levels of power, those who are part of a majority opinion on any given issue come next, and those who have a minority opinion just get bent over and screwed by everyone else with no recourse except to leave their family, friends, and home.

Actually, that's capitalism. Socialism is supposed to do the opposite but devolves to state capitalism.

You can rant about how much you hate people who are successful on their own merit all you like, but as a system, yours is the one that oppresses people by its very nature, not mine.

Where did this nonsense come from? I never referred to hating people who are "successful" or even promoted "my own" system. All I did was prove the thread title, and you've not countered my argument in any way. If any, not only did you confirm my point but explained why inequality takes place.

The only difference between you and I is that I am not willing to put a gun to your head to force you to cooperate with me.

Actually, that's how modern capitalism started, i.e., with enclosures of commons leading to private ownership of the means of production.