Sorry, I did not have time to respond to this until now.
Wellsy wrote:@Truth To Power
It seems that the fundamental basis of our disagreement comes down to the notion that value exists
It definitely exists. Value in the relevant sense is what something would trade for, usually measured in the medium of exchange.
and it’s on that basis you deny capitalist exploitation
No. I have stated explicitly, many times, that under capitalism, the forcible legal removal of people's rights to liberty and their conversion into the private property of the privileged, especially landowners, places the victims in a disadvantageous bargaining position that enables their exploitation by not only landowners but other privilege holders, owners of producer goods, and employers.
and I guess it also becomes unstable where one denies the existence of a capitalist class also.
As already explained, "capitalist" is a Marxist anti-concept contrived to prevent use of the valid concepts of employer, producer, landowner, merchant, and producer goods owner.
So you are critical only of what is seen as unproductive.
No, I am critical of what IS unproductive, but is legally entitled to take from what is productive.
You even deny the existence of commodities…
No, I identify the fact that "commodities" is another Marxist anti-concept, contrived to prevent use of the valid concept, "products."
Unless its just a rejection of houses becoming commodities,
Houses are products. Land is not. Marxists have to conflate them as "commodities" in order to avoid knowing the difference.
which I wonder what you make of China’s housing crisis or how they invest in houses for their value and no intent to live in them. A real problem for housing markets in Australia right now.
They have no interest in the houses. They just want the land, which they are not allowed to own in China, because they know that if they can just get ownership of the land, they will be legally entitled to take everything from everyone else.
One confusing thing is that you disregard the concept of capitalism as an anti-concept
No, capital
ist. Capitalism is a perfectly good concept: the economic system based on private ownership of the means of production (natural resources and producer goods).
and so you make out the distinction between employing people to work for you and owning producer goods.
Those are definitely two entirely distinct economic roles.
Now you can distinguish such things but such an abstraction in itself seems to muddle the matter as it frames capitalists as being more like a worker among workers akin to guilds of old or in the modern day, like small business tradesmen where you might work with the boss and use his tools, and the service that is provided is a profit for him which he deducts wages for the other workers.
You are conflating unlikes again. Employing people is definitely labor. If you do not think so, then you have never done it. Owning producer goods is not labor, but it is a contribution to production, which owning land is not.
It almost makes it seem like production is purely for use-values and entirely ignores exchange value and how money comes to mediate everything under capitalism,
Wrong. Money is not even necessary to capitalism. As Smith noted with his "invisible hand" analogy, producers pursuing exchange value automatically produce use value (utility) because people are only willing to pay for things to the extent that they have utility.
or even that capital as personified by a capitalist is about money that functions in a circuit to expand itself through profit.
Money does not expand itself. Marx's M-C-M nonsense is meaningless anti-economic gibberish. Someone who has spare purchasing power can try to increase it in various ways without working, only one of which actually makes a commensurate contribution to production: providing producer goods to the production process in return for either a fixed fee (interest) or a share of the producer's profits (dividends).
https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/c-m-cm-c-m-capitalist-ideology/That you see no such distinction speaks to the confusion of your own concepts.
No. That you imagine such a distinction to be meaningful speaks to the confusion of yours. Buying products and selling them on at a profit is work, and if you think it isn't, you have never done it.
You mention a worker that is acting independently of exchange as if they are like a small farmer in America before industrialization.
Or anyone working to produce for their own consumption, as our remote ancestors did for millions of years.
If one generalizes such a state to the economy at large then I will from
the outset call one delusional to think production is so thoroughly made up of independent laborers as the dominant part of the production.
You are just makin' $#!+ up again. I never said or implied that production was not generally undertaken for exchange or that labor was not generally performed for wages.
Or maybe you’re generalizing small business as somehow the dominant manner of production which is nonsense by the point of view of some of the worlds corporations which own other compnsies and are international in scale and employee thousands.
The size of the enterprise is absolutely irrelevant to the nature of the economic relationships.
You seem to make clearer some sense that individuals have a right to the fruits of their labor which is a sort of plea to justice that doesn’t negate that workers in reality so not own their product.
No. It is not
their product because they are not the ones who
caused it to exist. The producer is. The workers just supplied one factor.
And indeed the workers do not own the producer goods which they use to make the product and they also do not own the product.
Correct. The producer owns the product because he, not the workers, caused it to exist. He may or may not own the producer goods or the natural resources used to produce it.
It is the capitalist who sells it on for a profit.
That is your Marxist anti-concept again, which I decline to validate by use. If you mean the owner of producer goods, then no, he does not sell the product on for a profit because he does not own it. The producer does. If you mean the producer who owns the product because he caused it to exist, then although he sells it on for a profit (if he can), there is no implication that he owns the producer goods or natural resources used to produce it.
Their contract is for their capacity to work as a wage, they don’t make something and take it home. So I don’t know what to make of this point as its just not the reality in capitalist production.
It
is the reality of capitalist production: the owner of producer goods does not own the product unless he also performs the contractual role -- the labor -- of arranging for all the factors of production to be applied to the production process, thus causing the product to exist and earning rightful ownership of it.
The same confusion pops up earlier where apparently the owner of producer goods is apparently just another worker among others.
No. The owner of producer goods qua owner is not the producer, although he has had to perform the labor of deciding to devote his purchasing power to supplying producer goods and implementing that decision.
That I can conceptually separate things doesn’t mean that they are irrelevant to one another.
They are of course
relevant to each other. They are just not the
same thing. And using one word to denote them conflates unlikes.
And you muddle it by just framing that the products of labor belong to a producer, one of whom who just happens to own producer goods that everyone uses.
No. That is purely your muddle. The owner of the producer goods is not the same as the producer, who arranges to use the owner's producer goods in the production process in return for interest or dividends.
This does not in the slightest reflect production of commodites en masse
Only because actual people often perform more than one economic role.
and that you pose it as such is quite intriguing considering that a worker who just walks off with what they make on the factory floor is gonna be readily stopped, even in the case of raw materials there is extensive means to make sure workers don't steal shit.
Because their contribution of labor is not what caused the product to exist, and they therefore do not rightly own it. Similarly, an owner of producer goods or land being used for production who came in and took some of the producer's product would also be stopped as a thief.
But this scale of abstraction is just absurd when applied to the modern economy or even in consideration of capitalist production which no wonder a capitalist doesn't exist because you don't seem to even concieve of such as class in production.
There is no such thing as a "capitalist" in economics, other than someone who advocates capitalism. There are people who perform various economic roles -- landowner, owner of producer goods, employer, producer, merchant, speculator -- all of which Marxism conflates as "capitalists" because they own something used in production.
Where I see a capitalist putting money forth in the exchange for producer goods
You mean an owner of producer goods who owns them because he CAUSED them to be produced?
or means of productions, materials, and wages,
Those are not ownership of producer goods; are you now describing the
contractual role of the
producer?
but you conceive of not a capitalist but a worker among workers.
The producer is a worker; his contribution is the labor of arranging for all the factors of production to be applied to the production process, thus causing the product to exist. So unlike wage workers, he owns the product because he caused it to exist.
You emphasize the landlords are depriving people of access to the lands in which to subsist in such a manner.
Or in any manner. It would be up to them how they used the land if they had their liberty rights to do so.
I can agree with this as the existence of the working class is based on this precondition and hence Marx’s emphasis on enclosures in the case of England.
Marx knew the enclosures were a
necessary precondition for capitalism, but he didn't understand that they were also
sufficient to ensure the workers' exploitation.
Though the emphasis on land itself does make me wonder if you think capitalism if you even accept such a mode of production exists, in the present day is just a technical improvement in production and bears no distinct social relations such that it is historically specific and fundamentally different.
The distinctive feature of capitalism is its "free" and mobile landless working class and emphasis on market allocation of land and labor, which is far more efficient and productive than previous systems. If we ignore pre-settled hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding economies, and just focus on settled economies with secure, exclusive land tenure, there are three distinct stages before capitalism:
1. Communal agrarian economies where each household, clan, etc. had traditional land-use rights, like the village commons of Celtic tradition. People had rights, but their economies were not market-oriented.
2. Despotic agricultural and industrial economies that used slaves, whose individual rights to liberty were owned by specific individual owners, rather than being owned collectively by landowners as a class. Here there was often market allocation of products and sometimes land, but not of labor.
3. Feudal economies dispensed with ownership of individual human beings, but legally bound workers to specific lands, removing their liberty rights to seek opportunity elsewhere but securing their rights to use
that land as long as they performed the required services for the lord. Again, there was not much market allocation of either land or labor.
I find it difficult to imagine how one could conceive of modern capitalists, which you seem to deny the existence of as a class who employ laborers with means of production for a profit,
Because they do not exist as a class. See above for the various roles the Marxist anti-concept of "capitalist" conflates.
without such deprivation hence my emphasis on the initial depriving of land as a precondition for the existence of workers without or with a minimal alternative means of subsistence.
See above. It is not just the removal of their rights to liberty. That was also done to slaves and feudal serfs, just in other ways. The difference in capitalism is that workers are nominally free and thus allocate their labor more efficiently in the market, and land is privately owned with minimal conditions, so it is also allocated more efficiently in the market.
The capitalist which you deny exists isn’t uninterested in workers dispossession of land, as without it they would not have a class to exploit and would thus not exist themselves.
Wrong. They don't exist as a class anyway, and neither producer goods owners nor employers gain much by the dispossession and exploitation of workers because they have to pay landowners full market value just for
permission to access the exploitable workforce. So only landowners benefit, as you would know if you were willing to consider the typical price of a vacant building lot vs the typical price of a business that does not own the land under its premises.
Though of course you would deny such exploitation by an apparently imaginary class.
Employers do exploit workers' disadvantageous bargaining position, but
they don't get to keep what they take. They have to give it all to landowners just for
permission to exploit the workers.
It does make me curious what social relations you do imagine as consistent and essential in modern production.
I'm concerned with institutions that can be reformed.
You of course see in this the point that one would solve the problem in which workers could not be exploited by landowners.
<sigh> For the thousandth time, workers are not exploited only
by landowners but
by employers
because of landowning.
I would emphasize that the capitalist class which you deny exists on such a basis and in similar denial to production for use values so that it can extract a surplus for a profit.
The "surplus" is
created by the contributions of the producer and the producer goods' owner,
not the workers who, absent the owners and producers, would only have produced at the hunter-gatherer level.
Capitalists are simply service/good providers, again you have simply ignored the succinct criticism of how capitalism produces scarcity
That will be news to everyone who has ever lived under any other system....
and structurally requires an inequality in the power relations of capitalists and workers to reproduce itself.
That is nothing but brainless Marxist cant with no basis in economics. The power imbalance has nothing to do with capitalism "reproducing itself"; it requires unequal power of landowners and landless workers
by definition.
And I would assert the category of a capitalist as existent in that the whole point is their ownership of the means of production amidst workers lacking an alternative means of survival except to enter into wage labor
That is nothing but anti-economic, anti-rational, anti-factual Marxist GARBAGE. The employer merely offers them access to economic opportunity they would not otherwise have. He has NO POWER to do anything to them or deprive them of anything they
would otherwise have.
That is why you cannot
ANSWER THE QUESTION: How does the employer make the workers worse off than if he had never existed?
HOW?? and that a capitalist firm produces both producer goods and other commodities.
Anti-concept.
The distinction of what sort of commodities one produces for profit is not essential to being a capitalist as is making a profit from production.
Making a profit from production just means that you have made a net contribution: by your participation in the production process, you have
caused the production of value greater than was consumed in its production.
The distinction between such capitalists is even considered as a basis for economic crisis.
By Marxist economic know-nothings.
And as an aside, when I said about the capitalist who purchases products to exchange elsewhere, what I left out was the thought of someone who purchases raw materials or something and then has workers labor on it to turn it into another commodity.
That is a completely different role, but it is still a contribution to production and earns the market return.
Someone buys the woold to then turn it into a specific item made of wool who then sells it on, not merely people who purchase something cheaply somewhere else and transport it to where it is rare to extract a profit through unequal exchange.
You conflate both -- and others -- as "capitalists."
ANd that you state that Marx conflates landowners, capitalists, merchants, and employers/producers doesn't seem to make much sense other than your poor interpretation of my own, especially as he recognized land owners as a class.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch52.htm
This excerpt demonstrates Marx's confusion. He has no sense of what makes land rent different from the return to producer goods, and even explicitly states that dividing factor returns into wages, rent and profit is as arbitrary as dividing land into vineyards, fisheries, etc.
The emphasis on the role of capital in changing the nature of land ownership and that capitalists can own the land on which their means of production exist on doesn't some how mean conflating land owners who survive on skimming off of profits or wages.
Use of the term, "skimming off" proves you have no idea what the relevant economic mechanisms are.
And of course you see no wrong in the non-existent capitalist because he doesn't extract surplus value based on surplus labor above necessary labor in the working day, he is just another worker.
No, but he is a
contributor.
In fact he is simply benevolent in offering the opportunity for work.
ANSWER THE QUESTION: How does the employer make the workers worse off than if he had never existed?
But this makes it confusing as to how the worker who just happens to own the producer goods takes
Takes what?
But of course here the position not as a worker on the floor but a capitalist is clearer here as the circumstance does put the worker in a precarious position when denied the means of life but this issue would only touch on home/land ownership and leave capitalist exploitation intact.
No. People can only be exploited as a class when their rights have been removed without just compensation, placing them in a disadvantageous bargaining position.
But if home ownership was so damaging to the ability to exploit workers that it stops the prospect of surplus labor/value and thus value, capitalism wouldn't exist.
By definition, capitalism requires private ownership of land.
You frame the capitalist as unintersted in workers precariousness, but who knows if class even exists with you let alone class warfare. You sense the problem in land but independent production. Capitalists are just a bystander to it all.
No, but the owners of producer goods are
not the cause of the problem. Think about the store owner, the customer, and the protection racketeer. The customer gets the benefit of buying things at half price. He is not just a bystander. But he is actually helping the store owner survive the depredations of the racketeer, just as the employer, by "exploiting" the worker, is actually helping him to survive what the landowner has done to him.
- By Sherlock Holmes
- By FiveofSwords
- By Fasces
- By Tainari88